Grief
Torso

Sound intransigence, this is how the music of Grief can be described, and “Torso” is yet another demonstration of it.

Having abandoned the death doom influences that characterized “Come to Grief” (which I have already had the chance to discuss) in the previous “Miserably Ever After,” it is in this 1998 album that their chilling doom/sludge mix reaches the peak of inflexibility and extremism. Just the calling card represented by the cover, which is nothing but an ode to bad taste, is enough to understand that the band is not in search of appreciation. In this regard, the album's first song (“I Hate Lucy”) is a very slow and heavy seven-minute instrumental placed there as a warning to anyone who tries to listen to the record. Should you overcome this initial test, which is also the shortest track, you will be rewarded with “Polluted,” whose opening riff is something truly sensational, and you'll have to get used to Jeff Hayward’s acidic and icy voice continuously spewing venom against society and the human condition. Anger and frustration mixed with total despair continue to reign throughout the rest of the album with massive, slow sludge blows, describing a rotten and ruthless world where hope cannot exist, as evidenced by the lyrics of “To Serve and Neglect,” and the human being is depicted in the worst possible way.

Should you reach the final notes of “Tar,” relief will finally come, but also the satisfaction of having made it to the end and having overcome the listening challenge, because that's exactly what it is—a real challenge. Certainly, this pronounced intransigence hasn’t granted Grief much popularity, already the fact that they had never been reviewed on Debaser is symptomatic of all this, and it is perhaps for this reason that the subsequent “…and Man Will Become the Hunted” will see the most suffocating doom component be somewhat downsized.