The Grand Tormentor

This is the record equivalent of a thousand mounted marauders descending on a village, riding down every single last soul, and poisoning the grain supplies with ergot. It's empires crumbling into dust, whole ages swallowed by an entity which no man has ever escaped. It's like the churning cosmic jaws of a black hole, filtering all forms and matter into a fine dust, and spreading it across the vacuum. I've heard that Witchrist use some brand of amplifier indigenous to New Zealand, and it's not hard to believe when hearing this album. This is sound born from vaccuum, it sings of the vacuum, and it sounds like the vacuum. The guitar sound is absolutely pulverizing, a disintegrating force that somehow remains surprisingly legible throughout. It deserves special mention because is's something that is fairly rare in this end of the spectrum, and it's something that at least some bands use to hide behind, that is my feeling at least.

On Beheaded Ouroboros the force of the sound was absolotely shattering, but it did come at the expense of some riffs being a bit hard to make out. I didn't mind this, and it still remains one of my favorite records from the genre as a whole. But if I can have both disintegration level amplifier violence, and good clarity riffwise, I certainly won't complain. Some people say that production is unimportant for metal music, and that it's ridiculous to strive for rawness of sound if the composition becomes obscured. I don't agree with this at all - the rawness of the sound is just as important as the tonal composition for the listener experience, both are important aspects that can be used to shape the mood of a record. And The Grand Tormentor is a prime example of both sides being balanced at a very, very high level. This record both sounds and feels loud. And I mean Stooges' Raw Power loud, something that is surprisingly rare in metal circles. In my view it's absolutely perfect for this type of material.

It's hard to describe why this record is so unique and powerful, but it feels to me like a step back from the more typical approach of the previous record (which was definitely not "all-the-way" typical, for that matter). Beheaded Ouroborous was blasting, pounding, bludgeoning metal with relatively simple but highly effective riffage. And so is this record, but The Grand Tormentor has a slower tempo, and both riffs and drumming often gradually evolve into more complex shapes while remaining within an established theme. It may not sound like much, but it goes against the basic principles which make this niche of a sub-genre (if you can call it that) powerful normally. The result is what I would like to call a war metal epic, a paradox if this record had not shown the way to do it. I'm not going to elaborate much further since i think those who would get it, get it by now anyway... This record gets my highest recommendation, and it's the record which elevated Witchrist from revered to legendary status in my eyes.

Oh, and the artwork is absolutely beautiful!