Mutilating Astral Entities: TORTURE CHAIN
Album Review + Full Stream

Label: Yersinia Pestis

Since 2008, Torture Chain has been releasing small snippets of genius masquerading as demos while simultaneously hiding behind an impenetrable veil of secrecy, letting their music stand alone to speak for itself. Every year since their induction, the band’s material has sold out and been long sought after by fans who were chomping at the bit for a full length to grace the light of day. At long last that time has arrived in the form of Torture Chain’s latest offering, Mutilating Astral Entities, which serves up 7 brand new tracks of the same blistering punk-infused, straight ahead black metal that has made this band oh so enjoyable.

The album is broken into sections introduced with short instrumentals that set the pace for the following tracks, allowing for a much more aware discernment before having your senses obliterated for an additional 25+ minutes. These movements are methodical, carefully constructed, and painstakingly executed as to capture the majestic aural downpour this band construes and bends to their will. Winding its way betwixt, a revolutionary take on how black metal is slowly taking on a more maniacal, hybridized approach and transmogrifying into something that may never truly be grasped.

A somber instrumental sets the pace for the album’s beginnings, flashing remnants of an old west tribute to the outlaw’s last ride into the jaws of oblivion, splashed with subtle, down-tuned melancholy. Thereafter we are inexorably torn apart by a blinding rampage of offsetting harmonics drenched across pulse pounding lows that crawl and bend. Inevitably breaking down into a sonic maelstrom of cyclopian proportions that stretch the imagination and fill the fainted heart with abhorrent consequence. The second portion of the album reveals the crowning gem of this album in the form of “Totentanz,” which opens with an end times revelation-esque spoken verse, setting the calm before unleashing a torrent of haunting lulls across scattered solos that tear and pull while dragging you further down into a swirling vortex of absolute nothingness. Drifting just as seamless as whence it began, the album ends on the secondary portion of the opening instrumental, leaving a contemplative end to a crushing, hour long effort.

So as far as the secrecy is concerned, I don’t really give a shit if this band ever reveals itself on social media, their music has stood as an absolute triumph from day one and that’s really all that matters to me  For those of you who have waited for this full length, you would be remissed to pass this one by. Check out the opening track below.