ALBUM REVIEW: A Judgement Divine – Torii
The current creative renaissance within American black metal has put a lot of well deserved attention on the scene across the pond. In spite of many great bands receiving cult status the world over at the moment, it’s still got plenty of excellent hidden gems that deserve to be given wider attention. Arkansas’ TORII, for example, are one of the most prolific bands within the scene, with six full length records seeing the light of day since their formation in 2012. The latest of these records, A Judgement Divine, is yet another excellent slab of monstrous blackened death metal with a slight sludge influence, and stands as one of the band’s best records to date.
Album opener Army of Sand is an eerie track that slowly creeps into being with slow, jarring yet melody tinged chords, backed by powerful, primal drumming. It’s a track that rarely, if ever, relents from a funereal, crawling pace, and when the acerbic, hellish vocals come into the picture, they prove to be a great counterpoint to the density of the music. It slowly gathers momentum throughout, gaining a noticeable intensity that, just after the half way point of the song, gives way to a lush acoustic guitar piece that does a great job of breaking the song up, before launching into a soaring, atmospheric and decidedly quicker motif, which features some excellent lead guitar hooks. It’s got black metal’s sharp, peppered liberally throughout with some borderline sludge passages.
Theory of Existence makes great use of distortion right off the bat to grab the listeners attention, before launching into a solid, mid-paced slab of blackened death metal, tinged with haunting guitar lines and robust gutturals. It eventually comes back down to a much more minimalist level, with a great, bubbling bass line, thunderous drums and much cleaner guitar parts coming together to give us a bridge into the tracks most experimental moment; a sparse, heavily distorted guitar comes into the mix, injecting a little psychedelic influence into the track as it comes to its final moments, quickly fading away until only a dark, whispered vocal remains. The Grand Banquet doesn’t immediately go for the jugular, but when the drums eventually come in, energetic and frenetic as they are, you get the sense that this is going to build to a ferocious and fierce piece of music. Instead, It proves to be a more doom metal based affair, at least as far as the music itself goes, with the guitars, bass and drums moving at a relative snails pace, a far cry from what the initial motif of this track promises. The vocals are, as usual, undeniably visceral and dripping with venom, packing a substantial punch and helping to add plenty of intensity to the music that backs it.
Dirus Serpens, the album’s fourth track, sets a softer, yet still unflinchingly dark, tone based around a great sounding guitar with some heavy ambience making it sound all the more impressive. As a second guitar harmony comes in towards the song’s midway mark, this sparse, hypnotically repetitive and epi sounding instrumental track gives the listener a sense of foreboding that sets you up nicely for the album’s final two offerings.
Penultimate track, Gates of Paradise II- The Cold Masque of Romance, is effectively the sequel to the self titled track off of TORII‘s 2016 album, Gates of Paradise; this is a really dark and oppressively bleak sounding track, which makes great use of disjointed, jarring chord progressions and minimalist drumming and vicious vocal deliveries. It begins to gain intensity and momentum as it progresses, with the drums in particular coming to the fore and adding a lot more speed and precision to the mix. Although this song has plenty of the hallmarks of death metal, it is far closer to a sludge track, both emotively and in terms to the way the music is performed. When compared alongside the track that it shares a name with, from their previous album, it’s clear that this song is slightly more subdued than it’s prequel. The guitar tone is just a bit less chunky and the vocals don’t sound as thick and dark as they do on the original Gates of Paradise. Nonetheless, it’s still a great track that helps to set the listener up for this album’s closing offering perfectly.
The final, titular track on the record, A Judgement Divine, is another starkly melancholic track with some great melodic flourishes and gnarly, bestial gutturals. It quickly gives way to far more substantial, chaotic riffs and fevered drumming that make this song sound all the more powerful and fierce. This contrast between the slow and sorrowful and the fast and fearsome is great, and it provides a lot of variety throughout the track that keeps this sprawling, monolithic track interesting. Some excellent sounding piano pieces are introduced, and from this point on, the song begins to gradually wind down, until there is only a sole guitar line playing. It’s a great climactic moment for this album to come to and end on.
This is a really solid record from TORII that incorporates a lot of different styles, from black metal to sludge, with great effect. A couple of songs feel as though they have been written in accordance with a formula, and at times it does feel that the album’s production prevents a few of these songs from sounding truly massive and ferocious, but other than this, it’s an incredibly eclectic record that brings in a variety of influences and styles, which makes for a great album. It’s got plenty of progressive flourishes that make for interesting listening and showcase a band who are edging towards their creative zenith. It’s clear that even six albums deep into their recording career, TORII still have a plethora of great ideas, and the potential to follow this up with something that will truly make their name within the US black metal scene.
Rating: 8/10
A Judgement Divine is out now via self-release.
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