Torture

If you've ever tried to write a review for The Metal Archives, you'll see that one of the points the rules insist on most is that you talk about the music over everything else. So that's what I'm going to do next: There's ambient music that seems to be inspired by horror movies from the 40's and 50's that will take about 4 minutes in total, and another one more focused on very subtle dark ambient that will take a total of 7 minutes. The first mentioned is the most interesting as it is the one that best accompanies the rest of the content and the idea it wants to transmit, but it is hardly used and when it is, it is ruined by other factors. The second one fits worse and is really inferior to almost any other dark ambient you can imagine, it lacks creativity and atmosphere. And that's it, that's all I can comment on the music in Torture, because the whole rest of it is just not music. The remaining part of the demo consists of the supposed recording of a real turtle by the members of the band to a man.

There are two reasons why this material, which has not a single metal element, is more popular among the metal public, the first one is because the members of the project are related to metal music, being members of the LLN scene. But the other reason is because of the absurd obsession of the metal public to look for terrifying sounding music without caring about the quality of the content. Have you ever wondered why Stalaggh seems to be a name only popular in metal circles? That's why. And although it is true that musical currents like noise or power electronics are related to various artists who also have their interests in metal music, the truth is that Torture doesn't stand out or contribute anything in any musical field.

The torture sections are laughable at best, the noises, agonised screams and the laughter are so over the top that you can't take them seriously, and the worst is when they are overlaid with the brief musical spaces that the demo possesses, removing any redeeming glimpses that this work might have had. An astute person might even say that clearly this must be a parody work, something that both Lord Beleth'Rim and Vorlok Drakksteim must have done without too much pretension and may not have been more than messing around. But even that and nothing else really could justify anything that is put forward in this demo.

I guess I really don't have much more to say because this work doesn't have enough substance to allow me to do so, I could talk about the fine line between a work of genius and absolute disaster and how this demo completely breaks that idea by being simply the worst thing I've ever heard and how it has nothing even from an artistic and subjective point of view that can redeem it. But what I can tell you, dear reader, is that if you ever come across someone who uses this demo as gatekeeping to prove how kvlt and raw they are, and it is true that some people use this release for that purpose, I assure you that person is a deceitful, dishonest and probably pathological and compulsive liar. Only a person you can't trust would try to sell you this rubbish as quality. The real torture is listening to it.

One of the more obscure and barmy projects in the French Black Legions scene way back in the 1990s was this ill-advised collaboration between musicians (or perhaps non-musicians) The Black Lord Beleth'Rim and Vorlok Drakkstein. As if these fellows didn't already have more than enough solo and collaborative efforts with others in this secretive network, they joined forces together anyway and coughed up this sick joke effort onto tape. It plays like an insane soundtrack of a demented short film in which some fellows, already gone crazy from whatever combinations of bad fortune they had in the past, clobber one of their own and dismember him with various implements that include a metal pole and an electric drill. I'm supposing the idea behind this deliberate bad-taste recording might have been to find out how easily duped people might be listening to this tape and believing someone was actually being killed and cut apart.

The pig grunts, the sharpening of knives, the exaggerated laughter and the screaming are accompanied by rather basic melodies of droning dark-ambient synth and gravelly organ sounds. Some genuinely experimental ambient drone comes drifting out of the speakers in track IV – all tracks are untitled - as barely audible clouds of hissy noise, thudding subterranean rhythms, mystery animal growls and dancing faux-insect chirpy tune loops. This is the most song-like piece, in the sense of having repetition and something resembling a beat even though the noises and sounds barely qualify as music. Closing track VI is intended as a collage of startled and horrified organ drone melody and a disgusting series of retching, vomiting, coughing and groaning from the murderers who (I presume) must have eaten their victim and are now paying the price.

The demo is recorded in such a way as to seem primitive and brutal, reflecting a view of the world and humanity as vicious and vile, governed only by its gross and instinctive appetites. The exaggerated nature of the noises, grunts and laughing, and indeed the whole scenario itself of a bunch of folks made crazy by extreme poverty or starvation whacking and cutting each other up indicate that the recording isn't to be taken seriously. A very twisted and macabre sense of humour is needed to appreciate the silliness of the whole thing and the actually genuine spine-chilling creepiness of the music and the unsettling atmosphere.

I enjoy gritty mid 90s dark ambient/dungeon synth especially if it somehow relates to the black metal scene in a direct or indirect way, so I instantly got excited when I heard that this demo was dug-up in full and was being hosted on a download site. Sometimes I fall asleep to music, particularly chill electronic stuff or ambient, but the problem here is well... I ended up literally partially falling asleep to this ... and not intentionally either.

Supposedly this demo tape features sounds of a man being tortured. I'm almost positive they're not authentic torture recordings because the grunts and yelps sound very exaggerated; something you would hear out of maybe a video game... not an actual torture. The laughing that is displayed in reaction to the supposed torture is even worse; over-exaggerated dumb evil laughs are all over this cassette and they appear whenever whoever is pretended being tortured isn't groaning or whining. Oh, and uhh they also appear whenever there's no music playing which isn't very often....

It's kind of sad that this is supposed to be a musical recording but I had to first comment on the "torture" sounds gimmick before any actual music. That's the problem though; there's barely any music here, it's maybe 2/3 of torture sounds and 1/3 of actual synths and dark ambient material and that just straight up sucks. Sometimes the two are played together simultaneously but not that often. To give an example of what I mean though; the first track is about 30 seconds of synthesizers and track 2 is just a full 4 minutes of the torture sounds and cheesy laughter and then track 3 comes in which is a music song that doesn't last long. Track 3, is however, the best this tape probably has to offer.

Track 3 (I also forgot to mention none of these tracks have names which is why I keep referring to them as such) sounds a little bit like ambient-era Burzum with a bit more grim atmosphere. It's nice but the enjoyment doesn't last long. It stops about a minute in just to start presenting you with more annoying fake torture sounds and cheesy evil laughter for almost a whole five minutes. I really wonder what the point of this tape is. It left me confused by the time this part of the tape arrived. You can find this type of evil-sounding stock sounds at Walmart on CDs for like a few bucks, so what is the point?

Track 4 is about the most creepiest sounding song on the whole release and is probably my personal favorite especially since it actually sounds like a minimalistic dark ambient song and has none of that torture-sound/laugh bullshit. Then track five comes in and I'm not even going to tel you what this track consists of, you guess it yourself, genius. It's at this point in the tape that I actually began to doze off, my eyes closed while these annoying fake-screams and laughs were playing in my ears as I grew bored as I would have hoped to be. I went into this tape expecting something totally different and I knew I wasn't getting what I wanted. Oh well. The final song then starts and I slightly open my eyes to the sounds of synths and faint yelps. Not a bad ending to this whole release, but not a great one either.

Basically if you're interested in some weird experiment that came out in the mid-90s black metal scene, I would say this is worth checking out. Do not by any means go into this expecting a legitimate dark ambient release cuz you'll be disappointed like I was. There are moments where this release sounds legitimately creepy and somewhat disturbing such as songs 4 and 6, but the good moments don't last long enough and their torture/laughing stuff is just drawn out for way too long and outweighs any actual ambient material. I really wanted to like this, but I don't think I'll bother listening to this again anytime soon.