Torn Apart - Craving Pale Flesh MCD review artwork

Rating: 7.3

Country: Sweden

Release Date: 2007

Record Label: Pathologically Explicit Recordings

Track list:
1. Slaughtered by Hands
2. The Impaler
3. Craving Pale Flesh
4. Morbid Penetration

Total playing time 14:16

Torn Apart - Craving Pale Flesh MCD

Christoffer Långström - Vocals
David Eliasson - Guitar
Mikael Sandström - Guitar
Petter Johansson - Bass
Alexander Wegebro - Drums

Using a misleading melodic death/thrash metal artwork and logo, Torn Apart are in fact a bunch of talented youngsters who play old school death metal that would bring a tear to the eyes of the death metal veterans. Not really, but they would sure be pleased learning that Torn Apart, unlike their peers, have enough dignity and individuality to not ride the trendy wave of the effortless rehashing of the old bands, a wave that over the past few years has sadly generated enough momentum to be categorised as the New Wave of Old School Death Metal or new old school death metal or just lame ass death metal.

So instead of the Entombed/Dismember emulation that we are all too familiar with, Torn Apart excavate and bring together the forgotten monoliths of Swedish and North American death metal on just one cd – Hypocrisy's Penetralia and Gorguts' Considered Dead – creating a blinding white flash of divine light that is followed by 14 minutes of thunderous death metal music that defines Craving Pale Flesh. Those who are aware of the quality of these two underrated albums shouldn't find it too difficult to estimate the potential power of Torn Apart's music and should therefore be lying on the floor with their hands stretched up in anticipation of its oppressiveness, the Grave presence in their music giving all the more reason to do that. Right from the brilliance of the flooring opening riff, you are made to contend with the unrelenting heavy blasting synonymous with Penetralia that is superimposed with Christoffer's vocals, which bearing an uncanny resemblance to Gorguts' Luc Lemay in his heyday, resonate from the tortuous canals of your ears to delicate cholesterol-stuffed chambers of your heart to the interminable corridors of your bowels and finally out.

Aggressively fortified with cannon-like blasts and incisive Swedish riff-lances, Torn Apart 's uncomplicated pulsating songs however possess a small weakness: loose gaps between their protruding fortifications that render them pregnable in the long run. An attempt is made to interlace their pounding parts with the harmonies of early Hypocrisy but that is not sufficiently implemented. Torn Apart also do not believe in the effectiveness of leads and rarely feel the need to slow down like the oldies. Instead, to achieve that, they provide for radical interludes against the backdrop of tortured screaming vocals. Grouchy veterans might want to conclude that Torn Apart are impulsive song writers, bordering on frivolous. On this MCD though, their synchronised brutal attack, unstoppable in its fury, is enough to rout you, their modern production lending them all its support to ensure that.

Torn Apart have proved to be a fine revelation. With some more work on their song writing, it is doubtless they have a bright future ahead of them. While playing solely to one's strengths is not a bad thing per se, they need to delve into the intricacies for it is that which makes a good band a great one. Robust, sincere and unpretentious, Craving Pale Flesh is a debut worth craving for.

July 29th, 2007