Crushed Under...

When I initially heard Torture Wheel back in '05 or '06, I wasn't particularly enthused; the music seemed rather bland, honestly, overly indistinct and meandering. Revisiting it now, though, I see that this EP is a pretty strong early entry in the more extreme end of doom. Moreover, I've begun to see the significant parallels between this project and E.M. Hearst's more popular child, Wraith Of The Ropes- namely, that Torture Wheel is just a more minimal take on that project.

E.M. Hearst has a certain musical vocabularly which tends to remain unchanged from project to project; a love of murky and reverb-drenched production, delicate, almost toylike synth patches, and washes of murmuring, distorted vocals snaking around pillars of guitar and bass. Wraith Of The Ropes made use of all these things, and Torture Wheel does as well, but in an even less songy fashion that Wraith Of The Ropes ever did. The four sprawling tracks on 'Crushed Under...' take their sweet time getting where they're going, staunchly refusing to cut down their lengthy instrumental intros and build-ups in favor of listener convenience. Surprisingly, though, these protracted sections tense, held notes don't come across as boring so much as patient; Hearst knows that in this style, it takes time to build an atmosphere.

That being said, this is not staunchly minimalist and droning torture doom like Moss- there's always something going on, and the heavily layered and nuanced production goes a long way towards making such deceptively simple music more engaging for the listener. The individual tones of guitar, bass (if present), and synth have all been carefully carved out, given their own musical space and sound to work with. The result is a very even but very playful sonic presence to the music as a whole; there's lots of different sounds and textures to sink one's teeth into, and in funeral doom, where one as a matter of course must revel in the individual tones, this is a wonderful aspect.

Torture Wheel's music is primarily instrumental, with just bare traces of vocals popping up occasionally, so far in the background you almost think they're auditory hallucinations at first (which is probably intentional), but the instrumental compositions are very solid and can actually stand on their own without a leading voice. Like most good funeral doom or ambient, Torture Wheel's music is based off the slow addition and subtraction of elements, and Hearst paces these minute changes in such a way that just as you're about to tire of a phrase, something new is introduced to change the way you look at it.

Now, Torture Wheel's style is admittedly pretty unapologetic; in the end, either you're down for some unbelievably slow, somewhat intentionally monotonous music, or you're not. This is a very pure doom record for doom fans which will likely only bore and aggravate those not delighted by the genre already. Still, if you dismissed this when it first came out (as many did), perhaps you should investigate it one last time. Hopefully, like me, you'll have a pleasant change of heart.

I'm happy I didn't spend money on this steaming pile of shit. This has to be one of the most boring albums I've ever heard in my life and I can't understand why this band has even some small cult following.

Let me start with the most important part of metal music: the riffs. On this album, the guitar work is quite good, as it's heavy and doomy, but it mostly drones on and on and you can't hear many of the good riffs because they are buried under too many weird sound effects. I only really recognized them when I tried to speed it up a little bit. The first two songs really sound better when you do this. The drum-programming is boring and filled with horrible Hi-Hat tipping.

The worst part of this album are the annoying sound effects and what I think is supposed to be the vocals. I don't mind sound effects as long as they add something to the atmosphere of the album, but the effects on here do nothing other than annoying me. They're like something you would expect from an old Nintendo video game, but not from a Funeral Doom album. It doesn't bring up images of horror and despair, like it's supposed to do, but instead images of Mario, Kirby & Co. jumping through their virtual worlds.

The "vocals" are even worse. Most of the time, they don't sound like vocals at all, but more like wind howling through an open window or someone who's talking underwater. I always imagine E. M. Hearst in a Scuba, diving to the bottom of a swimming pool to record the vocals when he starts to "sing" in "Mary".

This could have been a decent Drone album without all the electronic shit smeared all over the riffs, but sadly, Mr. Hearst has chosen to take a more "unique" path with Torture Wheel. If you are a fan of Old-Nintendo-Game-Music, buy this, otherwise keep your hands off. There are tons of better Funeral/Drone Doom releases.