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Severe Torture

Sworn Vengeance

Written by: PP on 31/01/2008 01:21:04

So coming off a murderously brutal death metal review (Lay Down Rotten), I decided to jump straight onto the next worst sounding band name on my never-ending review list, namely Dutch Severe Torture and their new album \"Sworn Vengeance\". The thing about bands with such names is that not only can you be certain that they are brutal-as-fuck death metal, they rarely deviate from the generic formula of the genre: attempt to sound as disgusting and bone-crushing as possible. Sometimes I wonder if these bands have some sort of implicit competition between them about who can get the most gross sound out of their instruments while still keeping it at least in the borderline of listenable.

Don\'t get me wrong here, I do enjoy quite a few death metal albums, as you might have read on my Lay Down Rotten review the other day. Severe Torture isn\'t that bad either. They\'ve got a couple of amazing lead riffs (see \"Dismal Perception\" and especially \"Countless Villains\"), rock-solid drumming (as usual on most death metal albums), and a deeply gnarling/growling vocalist who isn\'t afraid of his vocal chords incapacitating by the sounds of it. But they lack one aspect I value especially high in any form of music: melody. While there are a few passages here and there, where either the serpentine riffs make me raise my eyebrows or the solos give me chills, for the most part the band has too much gruffness and too little slickness in the instrumentation. One of the only exceptions to the ensuing chaos is the doom-influenced, fully instrumental \"Submerged In Grief\", the final track on the album. it\'s so full of dragging melody and everlasting progression that comparing it to the rest of the album is like comparing day and night. I only wish the band would focus on writing more songs like this one, because I think the vocal style could do wonders here.

In the end, \"Sworn Vengeance\" is a relatively standard (albeit brutal) release within the genre, a decent effort without shining on any particular aspect. As such, it\'s unlikely it will be attracting new fans to the genre, but it should keep current fans pretty happy.

Download: Dismal Perception, Countless Villans, Submerged In Grief
For the fans of: Dying Fetus, Lay Down Rotten, Suffocation
Listen: Myspace
Buy: iTunes

Release date 11.12.2007
Earache Records
Provided by Target ApS