TORCHURE - The Essence (VIC Records - CD 2015)
Quite many old death metal
classics have been reissued in the recent months and years, and even more are yet
to come… and it’s great, as it sometimes shows me what albums I am still
missing in my collection. VIC Records also is quite active in the field of
re-releases, they recently reminded us old recordings of bands like Carbonized,
Pentacle, Dead End, Eternal Solstice, Expulsion, Furbowl, Judgement Day, God
Dethroned, Phlebotomized, Burial, Darkified, Mangled… So, many really awesome
bands, which were mainly active in the 90’s. And here’s another one – and it’s
actually among my favourite bands from that re-release stream; this is German
Torchure. I’ve been familiar with them already since the early 90’s, already
back then I had a Polish boot tape of “Beyond the Veil” (which nowadays I have
on LP, ha!). It’s funny though that for many years I thought this was the only
Torchure album, until when about ten years ago I found and bought the second CD
“The Essence”. Nowadays both Torchure albums are rare as hell, so I am not
surprised that VIC organized their re-editions. And I am also happy about it,
as it can introduce this excellent, but so underrated German band to the new
generation of fans of the old school death metal. I even bought “The Essence”,
as it comes with two extra songs, which were originally featured on a rare
compilation “This Stuff's 2 Loud 4 U”… And well, I must say that this is another
well done VIC re-release. So far I was the most impressed by the work they did
with Pentacle’s “The Fifth Moon” CD, but “The Essence” is also great. It comes
with nice booklet, with some liner notes, lyrics, photos… Cool.
But most importantly, the
music shreds. I don’t know if it’s a better album to its predecessor, maybe it
is? I mean, I love both, but it’s so damn hard to pick up which is my favourite
haha. Anyways, for sure Torchure has changed slightly. On one hand they
maintained the trademark harsh, aggressive, thrashing death metal untouched;
the band had quite characteristic sound, as well as their style of
arrangements, riffing, even vocals of Martin Matzak could have been quite
recognizable. The band sounded like early Morgoth meets Mercyless, Messiah
(mid), early Fleshcrawl, early Asphyx… but had enough guts to create their own,
individual sound. But then on the other hand “The Essence” develops the style
from the debut CD and brings some changes. There are more slow, doomy songs
here and what’s more, the band brought a keyboard player to the line up. And
obviously Patrick Felsner was not there just to stand on the photos, but he did
play in many fragments of the albums. Obviously he mainly appears when the
music slows down, gets heavier, when the it becomes quite atmospheric and dark,
gloomy sounding – what, by the way, brilliantly correspondences with some
other, way more aggressive and faster tracks.
So, “The Essence” is
exceptionally varied, brutal and sick death metal album. And it’s also one of
the reasons why I love it so much. The songwriting here is just excellent,
there are some songs, which are truly phenomenal… I am actually surprised that
this time I prefer those slower and more atmospheric tracks, but they do sound
so fuckin great! Sweet! Anyways, there are songs like “Invisible Truth”, “No
Rest in Peace” and “Sinister Seduction”, which are all aggressive and brutal,
fast, thrashing death metal, very much in the vein of the first album. The
album even features “The Traces”, which originally appeared on the 1991 demo. Then
there’s such “Cry of Madness”, which is a fantastic mix of fast and slow death
metal, where doomy, melancholic part is followed by utterly merciless, violent
riffing and fast drumming… and there’s also such “The Essence” or “Voice of
Power”, which are all doomy and gloomy, where the keyboards fill the playing in
more extensive way and generally can remind you such LPs as “Astral Sleep” for instance.
I must also mention “Lost Souls”, which is an acoustic guitar based song with
Martin reciting some lyrics about death, dedicated to Reissdorf brothers, who
died in car accident not long before the recording session of “The Essence”
took place. Actually both tracks from “This Stuff's 2 Loud 4 U” are their last
recordings ever. These songs have much rawer and unpolished production, when
compared to the album, it also says in the booklet that Andreas Reissdorf was
searching for more atmospheric and visionary music at that time, maybe even
less death metal than what we could find on “The Essence”. So, it is almost
grotesquery, that if the brothers didn’t die, then this album for sure wouldn’t
sound so brutal and most probably it would just be different. But that’s
history now.
Anyways, please read the
interesting liner notes, as they say a lot about Torchure, the work on this
album, car accident, missing of good friends and the sudden split up. It also
asks why such essential for German death metal album didn’t get more
recognition back then. Of course one can blame the label, but who cares now,
really… Anyways, now with this re-release in hand, many can finally give
justice to this awesome album. I truly recommend it. It is fantastic and surely
among my favourite European albums of all time.
Standout tracks: “The Essence”,
“Voice of Power”, “Cry of Madness”, “Invisible Truth”
Final rate: 90/100
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