#defeatedsanity — Public Fediverse posts

Ancient Torment – Follow the Echo of Curses Review

By Spicie Forrest

“Between grief and nothing, I will take grief.” –William Faulkner, The Wild Palms

How do you grieve? Do you cry? Do you seek comfort in familiar places? Perhaps you bury yourself in busy work, hobbies, or your career. However you grieve, it is a deeply personal and taxing process. I suspect, though, that many reading this blog turn to music. And thusly grounded, I introduce Ancient Torment’s debut, Follow the Echo of Curses. Forged in the crucible of Finland’s gloom and Quebec’s triumphant misery, these Rhode Island black metallers offer an introspective journey through suffering and sorrow to the threshold of death’s doors. Nothing will ever cure grief, but this might help the darkest nights pass a little quicker.

Ancient Torment is firmly rooted in the second wave. All the standard hallmarks appear. Zealot (Witch King) provides a foundation of furious blast beats upon which Tormentum (Witch King) and Apparition (Cruciamentum) build walls of haunting tremolo. The occasional well-placed lead breaks free of the mortar, adding texture and tension (“Hanging by a Dead Star,” “Rotting Temperament”). Czarnobóg’s bass isn’t all too noticeable, but in this house of black metal, that wall is rarely load-bearing anyway. Decorating the interior is left to vocalist Stygal, who peddles in howls so tortured and haunted that even without a lyric sheet, his anguish is clear. It is around these despairing vocals that Ancient Torment builds their ode to suffering.

If Follow the Echo of Curses were just trve black metal, it would collapse in the first summer storm, but that’s not the case. Each successive spin unveiled hidden rooms and secret passages I had missed at first. On my second visit, I discovered choral arrangements building anticipation (“Spectre at the Crossroads”) and dissonant vistas crafted by microtonal variance between guitars (“Dejected Dreams Molested in Purgatory”). My third listen revealed the Bathory-worship of “Under the Guise of Virtue” and the Fate of Norns-adjacent opening riff of “Sorrow Verses.” A week spent in these halls highlighted the Ancst-flavored crust—evinced in plentiful d-beats and matching guitars—that adorns the baseboards. My favorite hidden treasure was found on “Rotting Temperament,” where Ancient Torment alters a recurrent riff throughout the track. What starts as an urgent and hectic melody slowly rots away to a simple four-note riff by the midpoint and settles there, a mere shell of its former self.

At this point in the tour, you might be tempted to look for mold under the floorboards or cracks in the windows of this coastal cottage Ancient Torment has built. The bass could be more forward in the mix, as could the lower end of the drums.1 You might pause at an average track length of seven minutes and ask about bloat. But each of Follow the Echo of Curses’ six songs is dynamic and energetic, keeping me engaged from start to finish. Longest players and closing pair, “Under the Guise of Virtue” and “Rotting Temperament,” fly by with an urgency which makes me doubt that nearly 17 minutes have actually passed. My only major complaint is the spoken word passage in “Under the Guise of Virtue.” It’s awkward and atonal, and its timing almost ruins the song. But flaws notwithstanding, after the album closes, I feel satisfied with my time spent here.

Follow the Echo of Curses grew on me. My initial impressions were of safe, boilerplate black metal, but I was mistaken. With each listen, I found more to enjoy. For those willing to dig in, Ancient Torment adeptly augments their core sound to create something uniquely their own. This house has faults, but it’s no fixer-upper. It stands confidently on its own. Like a home that screams the absence of a loved one in every unswept corner and every silent hallway, Follow the Echo of Curses is indeed the journey through suffering that was promised.

Rating: 3.0/5.0
DR: 8 | Format Reviewed: 320 kb/s CBR MP3
Label: Eternal Death
Websites: Bandcamp | Instagram | Facebook
Releases Worldwide: August 1st, 2025

#2025 #30 #AmonAmarth #AncientTorment #Aug25 #Bathory #BlackMetal #Cruciamentum #DefeatedSanity #EternalDeathRecords #FateOfNorns #FollowTheEchoOfCurses #Review #Reviews #WitchKing

Symphobia – Hideously Traumatic Review

By Alekhines Gun

Another day, another fresh debut by a slab of young hopefuls. Today’s offering comes by way of Indonesia in the form of trio Symphobia, dropping their first LP Hideously Traumatic after a sole self-titled demo the year before. At a concise two songs and sporting some charmingly ghoulish artwork, that demo was a vile little slab of promising violence, which leaned more into the modern slam trappings of Submerged than the usual brutal death proper Indonesia is known for. No member turnover and a short gap between releases imply a band with a musical vision and an eagerness to slot themselves into the next generation of woe-bringers; do they offer enough to get you back to therapy?

Symphobia have crafted a monument to brutal death of all varieties and walks of life. Trimming down the more overt slam clichés in the production of their demo (particularly the outlandish ping-pong snare) allows for a more matured1 take, walking a tightrope between solid deathly compositions and neanderthalic bludgeoning. Vocalist Jossi Bima does a dead ringer of an Angel Ochoa impression, but a talent for vocal phrasing (and vocal silence) means he actually adds to the percussive oomph of the riffs. (“Scattered”, “Convulsively”) Humam Aliy is a beast on the drums, working a limited set of ingredients into a well-concocted aural meal, with excellently placed sixteenth-note fills and masterfully selected double bass to give the illusion of dynamics and pacing even as the whole of the album never really lets up. The bass2 consistently makes itself felt with shreddage and twangy highlights, adding girth to an absolute smorgasbord of riffs.

Much like waves add texture to an otherwise flat and bland ocean, Hideously Truamatic offers a sense of the nuanced differences in brutal death strains of DNA to add personality to what threatens to be an overly homogenous listen. Do you like Misery Index? “Convulsively” has you covered. Do you think War of Attrition is the best Dying Fetus album?3 “Heinous” sports a riff worthy of a lost B-side from that era. The fingerprints of Pathology, Suffocation, Internal Bleeding, modern Pyrexia, and Cephalotripsy permeate the album, with the glue from highlight to highlight running through the eternal assault of …And Time Begins era Decrepit Birth. While Symphobia begin in familiar form, each time you think you’ve heard the best the album has to offer, the next song manages to come out swinging with a steel chair to top whatever offensive groove or thunderous breakdown came before it. Dodik Bhre offers up one riff-craft lesson after another, with a surprising emphasis on the occasional trebly runs instead of all-bass-all-bottom-end tropes. Songs like “Scattered” and “Abominable” stretch beyond the typical haze of blast beats and powerchord abuse, touching on the most straightforward moments of Defeated Sanity while lurching into a Disgorge-ian sense of mercilessness.

The only negative on such a balls-out assault of this caliber is a common one: the shadow of ones peers. Symphobia have grasped the ingredients of what makes all these other bands great, and distilled their essence into a blender of an album where the listener is tossed in to get slapped in the face with one meaty chunk after another. However, Hideously Traumatic comes across as a highlight reel of various stylings without forming into a cohesive identity for the band themselves. This is a love letter to the foulest and most pit-inducing of aural violence, and the letter is written in excellent handwriting and high-quality paper. I believe the best is yet to come, however, and if they can master the art of wielding their influences into a distinct final offering rather than being a mega-high grade tribute band, they will be ready to drop a slab of carnage to stand alongside the Brodiquins and Devourments of the world.

Just when I thought I was done with brutal death for a bit, Symphobia came out of nowhere with hammers and chainsaws to take my already abused ears to even more dire straits. Indonesia can be proud of its newest offspring, which continues to solidify the country’s reputation for a flourishing scene. That Hideously Traumatic reminds greatly of genre giants is hardly the worst flaw in the world. For now, seekers of euphoria-inducing savagery should find a high worthy of their time, with some truly traumatic moments indeed.

Rating: 3.0/5.0
DR: 6 | Format Reviewed: 320 kbps mp3
Label: Comatose Music
Websites: Official Facebook | Album Bandcamp
Releases Worldwide: July 11th, 2025

#2025 #30 #Brodiquin #BrutalDeathMetal #Cephalotripsy #ComatoseRecords #DecrepitBirth #DefeatedSanity #Devourment #Disgorge #DyingFetus #HideouslyTraumatic #IndonesianMetal #InternalBleeding #Jul25 #MiseryIndex #Pathology #Pyrexia #Review #Reviews #Submerged #Suffocation #Symphobia

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BLACKBRAID, DEFEATED SANITY, SLOWER & More Among Metal Injection's Top Tracks Of The Week

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#Blackbraid #DefeatedSanity #Slower #MetalInjection #GregKennelty #I #Leprous #Schammasch #Jade #RippedToShreds #Frost #Carnosus #ImmortalBird #MeltedBodies #BlueHeron #DeMannenBroeders