Torn Apart - Possessed by Death

TORN APART - Possessed by Death (GROTESQUE SOUNDS Productions CD 2019)

Russian death metal band Torn Apart this time. On „Possessed by Death” you'll find a compilation of two demos from this band, plus a song from split with Wombripper and a live track. So, it's a pretty massive dose of music, 55 minutes in total of old school death metal... A solid introduction to Torn Apart, who also did an album "Dissolving in Eternity", which was released in 2018, I think. 

First, we're hit by three songs from "Abominations" demo (2015). If I can be as brief as possible when describing it, I would just say that they sound like the most primitive, raw and obscure demo death metal band one could imagine. These songs have a very messy feeling, the band had rather little playing skills, songs are not interesting at all... Primitive is the best word, really. And boring, because this demo has nothing interesting to offer, and in field of old school death metal it's not even mediocre. 

The second demo "Dismembered Memories" is slightly better. The production has improved - it's still raw as hell, but just a bit better. The songwriting seems to have improved a little also, so did the performance of the band (although the vocalist sounds rather baaaddd and the drummer has still a lot of problems to keep the pace). But the demo is again rather dull and forgettable. There may be some cool riffs or fragments here and there and generally as a positive I think is the fact that it really sounds like one of these old reh demos from the early 90's. But would I want to play it often? I don't think so. 

The only song that I really like here is "Depth of Madness" from split tape with Wombripper. It again shows a small improvement in every aspect, especially in production, which means that Torn Apart was taking a step forward with each new recording they did. Which is good of corpse. I suppose that if more songs sounded like that one, the whole CD would be much more interesting. As for last song, "Symptoms of Death", it's such a shitty live recording that only gods of chaos know why did anybody decide to include it here. What's the purpose? I Have no idea. Crap. 

Any conclusions? Well, I don't think „Possessed by Death” is a CD, which I can recommend. Torn Apart sounds bad, their death metal is often terrible and when you see so many killer demos nowadays, it just feels like this particular band is worth nothing and no one needs it, as it’s just a waste of time. There's very little positive I can write about Torn Apart based on these recordings, sorry. 

Verdict: 30/100