Album Review: Torrefy - Life Is Bad
Reviewed by Carl Black
Welcome to a new genre of heavy music. We had heavy metal, thrash, death, black and back round to nu-metal, well Canada’s Torrefy want to introduce us to "black speed death thrash". I think they may need to work on a more catchy title but at least its more palatable than the NWOBHM.
Torrefy are a technical death metal band who reach out to other musical areas during some long, prog type arrangements within each song. They have a foundation of death metal with vocals, spat out from the front of the throat that makes the layman cough and splutter if singing along. During the course of each song a slower riff enters the foray. These “slower” riffs can range from galloping Maiden-esq guitar exchanges in 'Sarcophony' or rock sections as in 'Cells'. Each song has a surprise hidden within, that will have you jumping for joy like the day you finally got your first Kinder Surprise.
But much like the Italian confectionary/plastic novelty/egg sensation, it's all a bit short lived. The trouble is the stock death metal is in every song. And as the songs are so long (average song length is roughly seven minutes with two tracks over the nine-minute mark and only one track sub five minutes) we get way too much death metal.
It’s like the Aquafresh toothpaste, three strips of different coloured toothpaste all doing different jobs to give you chomppers so good you could end up biting through cable car cable much like Jaws in Moonraker (RIP Richard Kiel). But much the same as the disappointment felt with Kinder Surprise, it’s basically white, normal, toothpaste with some extra bits put in. You get more of one thing. Torrefy gives us more death metal than anything else and most of the sixty plus minutes of this album is basically that.
A new genre? Not really. Different styles displayed? Certainly. Black Speed Death Thrash? If you’re into your death metal, you’d do worse to give this a go.
Torrefy release 'Life is Bad' on July 1st.
