[avatar user=”Mosh” size=”50″ align=”left” /]With a name like “Overtorture”, it’s no surprise this is a pretty heavy slab of metal. It’s not quite as death-y as I would have expected, but in honesty it’s all the better for it.
Sitting somewhere between Carcass older and newer incarnations in terms of tone and heaviness, A Trail of Death is a sickeningly enjoyable album. If there’s one band that did spring to mind when listening to it, it was classic Pestilence.
“Embrace the End” is a superb opener. Heavy, solid beats drive suck the listener in while throaty vocals create a very dark tone. “Mirrorkin” has a much faster, more brutal start and heads further into traditional death territory then breaks things up with a wonderfully dark bridge three quarters of the way through.
“Deep Dark Darkness” has a great rhythm throughout the early sections that it’s impossible not to band your head to before rushing headlong into some seriously fast material.
We then pause for a break with the beautiful ballad that is “Maggots In Her Heart”. OK, so it’s not a ballad but it would be a great title if Overtorture were to do one. “Slither Inside” is every bit as insidious and evil as the title suggests, and then the second half of the album begins, culminating in the particularly slow and crushingly heavy “To Rend The Flesh”.
A Trail of Death is a great album. Dark, engrossing, pummelling and well-produced. It’s not, as I said, just a plain old death metal album. It has something extra which keeps dragging you back for just one more listen. Top tracks: “Deep Dark Darkness” and “To Rend The Flesh”. I love the mixture of tempos and the atmospheric feel that both songs exude.
A Trail of Death was released on March 6th through Apostacy Records
official | facebook | twitter | youtube | soundcloud
