Torture of Decimation

It shouldn't be taken as too much of an ominous beginning that your first thought when listening to an album for the first time that the cover art is actually more appealing than the music, but it's not exactly the greatest of forethoughts either.

I don't wish to dismiss this album immediately as quite honestly for what it is - a pretty standard brutal death album with groove - it does it quite competently which of late seems to be something of a dying art considering the speed at which everyone seems to be jumping onto the deathcore wagon.

The music itself can loosely be seen as an amalgamation of bands such as Sweden's Degrade, Dutch band Caedere and plenty of other bands that have gone before in the same style, with vocals at times the genre standard, at others more reminiscent of Screaming Afterbirth.


There's pretty much no need whatsoever to go into individual song diagnostics as quite honestly with 'Torture Of Decimation' more than any other brutal death (or 'slam death' whichever you prefer) album, there is a stronger sense of sticking to a particular formula with each and every song.
This is to the extent that by only midway through the album, you start to feel like you've already heard the song before or at least individual chunks of preceding songs regurgitated under different vocal patterns or guitar intonations.

On a final slightly negative note, the high vocals on this album have to be some of the most annoying I have come across in brutal death. I generally believe that higher pitched vocals belong in bands such as Origin with that lightspeed technicality and contrast with the much lower barking vocals or even in a more gurgle context with bands like Regurgitate and Butcher ABC.
'Torture Of Decimation' on the other hand just starts to irritate you after a while with the constant, annoying oversaturation of high vocals.


Whilst the music itself is done competently and the production is nothing to complain about, you're left with the feeling that the time you spent listening to this band could have been spent listening to say Devourment or even Human Rejection's countrymates Inveracity, who in my honest opinion does this Greek slam thing far better.

Not "bad" per se, but nor is it particularly interesting, novel or unique... just pretty... 'okay'.