### Torture Killer: Phobia

#### 05/06/13 || Ironpants

Five feet under…

Do you remember when you first started to listen to death metal? I remember… my first introduction to death metal was of course Death’s “Scream bloody gore” at a friends place, I was intrigued, but not so overwhelmed that I stripped naked and ran through the streets with the face twisted in a evil grin and shouting “Zombie ritual”. When their next record was released, “Leprosy”, I went apeshit and totally lost it. Then along the way, they all came by, Morbid Angel, Deicide, Obituary and Cannibal Corpse, and I had that same feeling over and over again. I just wanted to headbang all day and go completely wild and for a while, I thought Chris Barnes was the coolest cat in town. Then he departed from CC and started Six Feet Under, and their first albums made, maybe not an impact on me, but more of a curious feeling that lurked under my by then more “sophisticated” listening abilities. Because, I have always had a small crush on American old school death metal, when my friends gathered in circle jerking parties around “At the Gates” albums and/or gathered in rehearsal rooms copying the Sunlight-riffs or Gothenburg sound, I mumbled silently “I still think that Obituary is the best band…ever” or “I want to play groovier stuff, man. So I can headbang properly behind my drum kit”. Cause you cant headbang in a fast 2/4 pace…well of course you can, but I wanted to do the more windmill groove that gives you time to really push the song in a mid-paced, heavy, fat crushing tempo.

What’s all this have to do with Torture Killer from Finland? Well, just because I believe that they have the same feeling about this as me. You know the story, they are no rookies, these guys started out as a Six Feet Under cover band, they’ve had Chris Barnes doing guest vocals for them on earlier recordings, and now they have him again (in one track). And when I play “Phobia”, I get to that same mental state as with earlier American death metal, nowadays I wouldn’t even think of running down the streets like a maniac (If anyone has seen me lately, I would like to point out that I have a twin brother who’s retarded…and he also drinks too much…so, it must have been him?).

Torture Killer plays that older American Groove Death Metal that I am talking about, it’s laid back, mid-tempo, and cool. This is the stuff that I wanted to play when I was 20 years old, and if someone called me up today and said something like “I’m starting a band in the veins of SFU/Obituary” I would be in without even thinking twice. Because there is something with this kind of music that makes me going.

After a somewhat boring (yes) opening track, the album really kicks in with the title track “Phobia”, a superb up-tempo groove-Meister of a track. Suspiciously reminding me of a track from SFU’s latest, but I don’t care about such details. This track is a killer. There are several tracks on this album that gives you that old school feeling, such as “Faces of my victims” and “March of death”. But the king of songs on this album is “Written in blood”, the intro is just perfect with that southern bluesy feeling. Here is also where Chris Barnes appear grunting with his well known style. But that’s not the thing that makes this track stand out really, it’s the style of the guitar work all the way through. I hope this is some kind of “newer” style they are developing?

There’s also a slight problem with this style of metal, and that is that it’s very fun to play, but it isn’t always as fun to listen to it. It demands that you get your groove on as a band, and here is where Torture Killer fails a little bit at times. Yes, they play well, and there’s no doubt on what they are trying to achieve here, they are trying to deliver a really fat, groovy death album. But they don’t really get there in time on all songs, sometimes they loose me on the way. They produce the same feeling you can get sometimes when driving your car every single day to work, you drive on autopilot, you know that you’re driving but you don’t really think about it and suddenly you are there, but you don’t really remember the route or what happened on the way there.

I really wanted to like this more, cause I like the recipe, but the ingredients weren’t really used properly everywhere. They shoulda spiced it up a bit more. You know what I mean, you see some of the TV-chefs like Jamie Oliver or Gordon Ramsey taking whatever crap they have laying around, add some fresh herbs, olive oil and other random shit, and it looks like a fucking 5-star dinner so you try to copy and it tastes nothing at all, but you still eat it cause you’ve burned 2 hours making it and you’re hungry as hell.

- Information
- Released: 2013
- Label: Dynamic Arts Records
- Website: www.torturekiller.com
- Band
- Pessi Haltsonen: vocals
- Jari Laine: guitars
- Tuomas Karppinen: guitars
- Kim Torniainen: bass
- Tuomo Latvala: drums
- Guest
- Chris Barnes: Vocals on “4”

- Tracklist
- 01. Devil’s reject
- 02. Phobia
- 03. Await his third arrival
- 04. Written in blood
- 05. Faces of my victims
- 06. March of death
- 07. The book of dying world
- 08. Epitaph
- 09. Voices