Tormented Soul

Metal from the land down under. Besides AC/DC, that kind of commodity has not been very familiar to myself at any given time. Tormented Soul, a threesome from Melbourne, has none the less put their collective minds together and produced this piece of…..music, I guess. Sounds like a demo, but since it has nine songs (way over a professional demo limit) and I couldn’t find info that would prove me otherwise anywhere, so I shall review it as a full length release. This equals a more brutal outcome, but even a demo of this kind wouldn’t have blown any roofs off. The bands music sounds like something that’s trying to marry together Cradle Of Filth, Deicide and Slayer. What first led me to believe this was a demo was the absolutely horrific sound quality. Drums (well, programmed drum machines that is) are buried all over the album as are the technically-bearable-but-utterly-unmemorable guitar solos. The guitars produce some mediocre riffs here and there but everything crumbles down the drain when the singing begins. And it doesn’t help that the vocals are the thing that’s brought to the top of all this as the most audible element. Singer DemonFaz sounds like Dani Filth - when Dani is singing in his lower, more bassy voice, that is – only a whole lot weaker. It sounds like he pretty much talks through the entire album, and I don’t mean talks as in raps, but simply talks. Here and there he tries to go up the register in a Dickinson-like wail but these attempts are so strained that I literally laughed while trying to analyse this. When this straining howl belts out originalities such as “Eeeeve oof destructiooon, four horsemen riiiideee!” and ends the chorus with the Bodomish “JAU” growl that Alexi Laiho often uses in every other song (but to far greater effect then Mr. D here) I completely crack up, although some part of my mind is suggesting crying instead. This pretty much makes Britney Spears´ “uuhh, aaahhh, faster, deeper, baby”-whines sound like Matthew Barlow. Songs 1 through 6 are pretty adequately described by the description I gave of the band up there. 90 percent of audial butchering of any kind of taste, and the rest 10 percent that could be called atleast decent is ruined by that cursed “singing”. Sure, the drumbeats are pretty quick on a few songs but with drum machines, who couldn’t pull those off. Guys like Gene Hoglan and Dave Lombardo could pull these things off with two pedals and a bass drum, so the result fails to impress me. The first and about the only part that I would deem good here is the keyboard into to the seventh song, the title track of the album and the band. It actually has very nice melody in it and it is memorable. But after 50 seconds, all is lost once again when DemonFaz opens his mouth and the distorted (and sucking) riffs come in. A Lament For The Dead begins with some nice, Cradleish keyboards again and the song is pretty decent as a whole. Want to guess why? That’s right, its an instrumental. None of that voice = a better result on the double. The guitar solos that make up most of this song are pretty nice and some even can stick to my mind for a day or two, but that is equalled by more easily passing melodies that just drift away as “wallpapermusic”. A more atmospheric song and definitely the best track on this album, which anyhow isn’t saying a lot. It would have been so nice to hear this mostly-an-abomination end on a nice note. But no, the closer Fateless tries to sound oh-so-Eeevil and heavy, but the weak production and that voice flush it all down the drain faster than my second cousins hand pulls the toilet lever due to the outcomes of his four-day vodka-binges. Ditch the voice of DemonFaz to one that actually has some feel of strength in it, let him stick to the bass he plays here, replace the mechanized drums and actually mix an album, and you might have something that would be worth a second listen. Right now, all this disc is good for is as a present for one military-loving friend of mine who is quite keen on target shooting.