ALBUM REVIEW: Abcission – Torpor
“A tapestry of sludge metal, lumbering doom riffs, forward thinking post-rock dynamics, cerebral drone passages, ambient textures and stark spoken poetry” looks like a tall order straight off the bat. To imagine each of those elements on their own conjures crushing sonics, but altogether you’re looking at something that can reduce a mountain to rubble and a human to madness. Sure enough, it’s Bristol-based sludge trio TORPOR at the helm of such a project, so those cataclysmic imagined results are firmly within their wheelhouse. With a decade of destruction in their rear-view mirrors, they present their third album Abcission, apparently in the hopes of cleaving this planet to its core and altering the rotation of our wee solar system once and for all.
Interior Gestures thrusts their destructive intentions to centre stage in no time, unleashing slow cymbal crashes and fuzzy guitars upon the listener like a tidal wave. When John Taylor‘s vocals are added to the mix, it is done so with power to match and the intensity reaches a spectacular pinnacle. Soon, the elements are stripped out via a dreamy, post-metal passage that teems with feeling, before a haunting spoken word vehicle to its close. In one track, you have a decent read of TORPOR.
And yet when the apocalyptic As Shadow Follows Body bursts through the speakers, you are struck once more. Taylor spews out some of the year’s most visceral and terrifying vocals as the band gradually and painstakingly turn up the intensity. It’s an exercise in patience and stamina at nine-and-a-half minutes long, but the reward will stick with you as you pick up the pieces of your shattered psyche and frayed nerves.
If your senses haven’t yet been demolished, then the interlude-esque Carbon will get you there. A nauseating concoction of drone, feedback, static and guttural wretches that pummels and tortures. Once you’re fully tenderised and gasping for breath, they cap Abscission with the monumental Island Of Abandonment just to make sure that your disassembly is thorough. Then, as if you’ve been elevated to some form of nirvana, we are treated to one final explosion of post-metal malice, featuring soaring clean vocals; a shimmering light at the end of the pitch-black tunnel we’ve been travelling through.
Their previous album Rhetoric Of The Image was a superb effort in its own rite, but with Abscission, TORPOR have kept hold of everything that worked and made it better. The riffs are more crushing, the ambience more encapsulating, the drone passages more nauseating. They’ve shaved 10 minutes off of that last outing and created a tighter, more visceral and more memorable experience.
TORPOR retain their place as one of the most oppressively heavy bands in not just UK sludge, but on the global scene. This is a monument to the power that the genre holds and when it is wielded as efficiently and evocatively as it is across these five tracks, there are few things on this planet that will move you as much. A career best in an increasingly unattainable catalogue.
Rating: 9/10
Abcission is out now via Human Worth.
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