Abysmal Torment
Epoch Of Methodic Carnage

Premise: this review is not a critique towards Brutal Death Metal or Grindcore, genres which I more or less appreciate, but towards the band and the specific CD.

I came across this CD by chance, but I wanted to listen to it because it piqued my curiosity. Abysmal Torment is a Death Grind band from the island of Malta, and the group consists of no less than 2 Growlers, a guitarist (a big word), a drummer, and a bassist. But let's move on to the album. All the songs are characterized by annoyingly grating guitars, with too much distortion; moreover, the guitarist doesn't crank out big riffs, just emits random sounds, or at least that's how it seems.

Obviously, the sound is already all jumbled up now, the drums play the classic brutal tupatupa, but in this context, they sound like random hits, even the bass follows it. Then the Growl of the 2 singers sounds like the noise of a creaky door, the pedals of a squeaky bike. In my opinion, it was definitely tampered with in the recording studio. Another thing is that the tracks, although it's very fast grind, last more than 4 minutes and are super dull; moreover, it's hard to tell when one starts and ends, and so on. The only fairly appreciable songs are the title track "Epoch Of Methodic Carnage", "Death Bound Conundrum", and "Battered Into Nothingness", the only ones where the musicians seem genuinely committed to creating a real Brutal or Grind song and not an unbearable mess.

Another really unbearable thing I noticed is that the singing style of the 2 Growlers is very similar to a nursery rhyme or a little song like "Dormi dormi mia stellina" or "Ambarabacicicocò" and stuff like that.

I repeat, this is not a criticism of the genre; give me any Suffocation CD, and I'll call it a masterpiece, it's just that I don't agree with the fact that for certain bands, playing brutal is synonymous with playing poorly.

Thanks, see you next time.