Torpor – Abscission
Torpor – Abscission
Human Worth
Release Date: 15/09/23
Running Time: 40:13
Review by Dark Juan
792,461,878,569,712/10
Good afternoon, dear friends. It is I, Dark Juan, soothsayer to all regardless of class, psychopomp to toffs and gentry, God of tits and wine and a man who practices alcoholism as a hobby. I have been disappointed recently by a man who claimed to champion the cause of Metal, who lied about suffering from cancer in order to get out of doing a bit of work and then doubled down on it. It was even more dispiriting for this to have happened because one of my close friends is actually suffering from cancer and we have no idea whether it will be operable or treatable.
In short, don’t fucking lie about things that can kill people and then do a fucking disappearing act. There is little that can’t be forgiven, given time, but frankly there is a cadre of massive WANKERS in the Metal scene here in the UK that tarnish it and make it not inclusive. I’m not just rattling on about anti LGBTQIA+ people, but people who are absolute twats to each other, regardless of how they identify or their sexuality. I’m talking about the gatekeepers, the know-it-alls, the ones who are quite happy to belittle the art of others (not just bands – even your good correspondent has faced down barely literate cunts who thought that my ranting wasn’t worth shit. There’s over 10,000 people who think otherwise, you halfwit shitbags!) and sit in their bedroom/ cellar/ kitchen and pour scorn on people and artists who at least have made an effort to get their art out there and have poured every ounce of their talent and passion into said art and had the absolute cast-iron balls to release it.
Don’t get me wrong. Not all art is amazing. The act of creation is amazing no matter how poor the finished product is. And criticism is fine as long as it is constructive and meaningful and it is received in the manner in which it is meant, i.e., to help the artist improve their art and to give the artist (who frequently works in isolation, this being the nature of their passion) a voice in the outside world where their art is being appreciated. Dark Juan has no time for fucking philistines who are more interested in checking out the arse of the super-hot girl in the shorts and fishnets and Obituary t-shirt and sneeringly claiming that she couldn’t name three songs from “Slowly We Rot”. Chances are she knows their back catalogue better than you, neckbeard fucknugget! You look like a right twat in your paper-thin, original Master Of Puppets t-shirt that was last washed 28 years ago and is greyer than an old man driving a Suzuki Ignis through Bognor fucking Regis.
Wimps and poseurs (gatekeepers and misogynists) leave the fucking hall.
Shit, that rant went on longer than I intended it to. The Platter Of Splatter™ is slowly turning, and placed reverently upon it at this time is the third long-playing offering from Bristol, UK-based three piece sonic destroyers Torpor, and to say it is heavy is like saying Steve Vai can play the guitar a bit. This is not music I am listening to. It is the sound of souls being slowly torn apart in a hell composed of infernal machines that rip them to pieces, atom by incorporeal atom. Every single scream and moan of terror and agony is recorded and played back to them on a feedback loop of ever-increasing agony, their screams providing the energies that power the flayers and decapitators. Only total soul destruction will end their suffering. Torpor are the soundtrack to that suffering (‘Carbon’ being one of the most terrifying walls of noise that Dark Juan has ever heard, and now your favourite Hellpriest is now cowering in the corner, armed against all incursions. Granted, my armament is a butter knife but I’m taking your nipples off if you come near me…) and this album is not so much as a recorded work as an exercise in how you can torture the psyche of your listener and turn the poor fucker inside out with the power of distortion.
Torpor are described as a Sludge band. They are much, much more than that – they incorporate the power of Doom riffs, the dynamics of Post-Rock, the deep-rooted discomfort of Drone and ethereal spoken word passages to create an effect that something akin to a planet being torn apart and born anew in a star nursery. Again, and again and again. Planet Torpor has tides and seas, but these are molten rock, and the tides are solid rock being crushed and reformed under stellar gravitic energies so colossal there are no words to describe them.
Torpor are an exercise in absolute power and how it can be directed. It is shock and awe in musical form. It’s an entire air fleet dropping MOABs on you. It is not music. It is blast waves.
There is no point trying to describe to you a Torpor song. Torpor don’t write songs. They write movements. They write continental drift. Their music is as inexorable as a planetary orbit. It advances and ebbs like pyroclastic flows and the sheer power on display from a mere three-piece band is truly extraordinary.
Torpor sound like endless horror and misery. They are the slow hours after something catastrophic has happened and you are trying to come to terms with it. They are endless liminal space where there is no joy, only sorrow and the buzzing of flies. They are endless, pummeling heartbreak. They are meaningless pain without end in musical form. They are the inchoate howling of absolute agony, where there is no syllabification and only shuddering great intakes of breath before you carry on screaming without coherence into an uncaring, freezing, obsidian ether that feeds on your suffering.
It will not surprise you to learn that Dark Juan absolutely fucking ADORES Torpor. Their agonizingly slow, hyper-aggressive music is EXACTLY what Dark Juan loves. It is excruciating and Dark Juan’s imagination is fired by their sheer, unadulterated sonic warfare and as I finish writing up this review, Dark Juan is basking in the kind of afterglow only normally experienced by a serial killer and torturer who has managed to slake every perverse desire he/ she could think of and a few more besides. If sheer atavism is your thing then Torpor are your band. Torpor have well and truly fucked up Dark Juan’s Top Ten of 2023 list now.
Thanks, Torpor.
The Patented Dark Juan Blood Splat Rating System hasn’t been blown away quite so hard since P.H.O.B.O.S’s “Phlogiston Catharsis” and has no hesitation in awarding Torpor 792,461,878,569,712/ 10 for one of the most disturbing records it has ever heard.
TRACKLISTING:
01. Interior Gestures
02. As Shadow Follows Body
03. Accidie
04. Carbon
05. Island Of Abandonment
LINE-UP:
Jon Taylor – Guitar and vocals
Lauren Mason – Bass, Rhodes and vocals
Simon Mason – Drums, electronics and vocals
LINKS:
Disclaimer: This review is solely the property of Dark Juan and Ever Metal. It is strictly forbidden to copy any part of this review, unless you have the strict permission of both parties. Failure to adhere to this will be treated as plagiarism and will be reported to the relevant authorities.
