Torturerama - Close Encounters of the Morbid Kind

TORTURERAMA - Close Encounters of the Morbid Kind (GODEATER - CD 2015)

Among all these new bands, which shred with the old school death metal, Torturerama belongs to my favourites. I know that they are very little known, but I was lucky to buy both their previous releases (“Left as Remains” from 2010 and “It Begins at Birth” from 2014 – both quite limited) and damn, I did enjoy them a lot! It was obviously only a matter of time, when the band will attack again and deliver another slab of obscenity and repulsion... and here it finally arrived! This is Torturerama’s debut full length album “Close Encounters of the Morbid Kind”, released by Godeater! And it doesn’t disappoint me. It sounds exactly as I hoped and all together, there are ten killer death metal pieces (with only one older song from the previous releases; remaining nine are all brand new!). More so, the artwork has been done by the famous Juanjo Castellano and I just love it, especially that quite unusual purple colouring (maybe similar to Bodyfarm artwork)… Damn, what a great package.

Torturerama is one of those new bands, which perform their death metal with a strong Swedish style influence. And just as Graveyard, Demonical, Entrails, Departed Souls, Revel In Flesh or Puteraeon, they do not try to reinvent the wheel, but simply blast with the classic style. And do so just brilliantly. They have the right atmosphere in the music, which obviously is dark and horror. They also have the ability to compose killer tunes, with great, memorable riffs, with lots of catchy parts and aggression also and finally the whole album has been given a perfect sound quality. That production is quite typical for this sort of bands (just as the music itself, really), but it fits so perfectly and more so, it is so damn powerful, that when you play this CD loud, you can seriously see the walls cracking! And it’s just impossible not to bang your skull, while listening to “Close Encounters of the Morbid Kind”. This music is so energetic and so infectious, it’s like an insect or parasite that wants to drink your blood. Obviously, yet again we don’t deal here with a band, which would bring anything new to the genre. Bands like Torturerama – or all those, which I have mentioned above – are basically playing the music, which Grave, Dismember, Entombed, Desultory, Fleshcrawl or God Macabre have done already more than twenty years ago. But at the same time I can’t deny that they’ve updated it slightly. For example the production is usually a bit more up to the current standards, but still similar (with the characteristic guitar tone for instance). And also most of these bands have some blasting parts, which were not so common among the old crews in the old days. They never were that fast… So, it’s an old shit, but with something new attached to it.

I’ve been spinning “Close Encounters of the Morbid Kind” a lot in the past few days. Really, this music is hard to resist, so even if someone will accuse Torturerama for unoriginality, I just don’t care. I love this album. Good thing about it is that basically every song here is great, with no fillers and boring parts. I could probably mention the entire tracklist and each song will be great and each will have some parts that simply slay. But to mention just few, “Don't Incinerate the Dead” is the first real standout track, with deadly, hooky chorus part, a lot of D-beat and groove, but also with some killer blasts here and there and finally with just brilliant, melodic guitar solo. “Revel in Disgust” has simply killer riffage and melodies, but real blasters are “Flesh Ripping Sounds” and “Down with the Crowbar”. Both are going through the well known Dismember, Centinex and Fleshcrawl styles, but are just awesome, starting with the memorable harmonies and finishing with pure, aggressive death metal D-beat. And what about “Reduced to Fecal Splatter”? Another fine, ripping tune here! And so what that the song structures or whatever are easily predictable, so what that there are few similar bands? This is quality band and awesome recording, which just gave me a lot of pleasure. I simply love this style of music and hardly ever feel bored with this sort of bands. Torturerama is fuckin brilliant and I sincerely recommend them to all Swedish death metal freaks. Even if this Swedish death metal is played by band from Belgium.

Standout tracks: “Flesh Ripping Sounds”, “Don't Incinerate the Dead”, “Down with the Crowbar”, “Reduced to Fecal Splatter”

Final rate: 80/100