Black Lunatic Chaos

Torturium hail from Finland and they play fast and raw black metal. In my opinion this album is better than their previous full-length “Misanthropic Angels Burning Winds”, although both of them exhibit the same characteristics, long songs, the same distorted sound and hellish screechy vocals.

Torturium's sound is old-school black metal, mostly fast, although occasionally you get slow and agonising rhythms like in the beginning of the song “Black Lunatic Chaos”, where it starts with slow and heavy pace and it bursts into speedy riffs. Each song is comprised mainly of three to four melodic rhythms that keep repeating over and over again, without however being boring.

The album has some excellent ideas; for example the song “Grave Ritual” (or also in “A Dream”), it starts with very fast and melodic tempos and suddenly, in the middle of the song, there is a slow break, with voluminous cold guitars and gruntings that give you goose bumps. Or, another characteristic that I find particularly nice, the melody that comes out of the guitars' distortion sounds very harmonious and pleasant, although it's something you don't expect to hear from such primitive and raw music. You get this antithesis several times and this is one of pros of this release.

Something I also noticed is that there is no use of keyboards. There was some scarce use of keyboards in their previous release but this one has none, which I think it works out for the best, since it gives a more sinister and brutal feeling to the music.

The album closes with the “The Shadow Lives In Us”, which for the last two minutes you get a slow and afflictive pace. What a perfect ending.

The production is un-polished, it sounds like the recording has not been enhanced or polished in any way; it's exactly what you'd expect from any raw black metal production, just the three basic musical instruments, the vocals and the feeling.

Definitely recommended for all the black metal fans.