Hey there tech fiends, it's that time of the week again. Before we dive into today's focus, here's the usual reminder that if you're looking for more sick music, all prior editions of this series can be perused here.
In January of 2016, I covered Headfirst into Oblivion from Staten Island's Torturous Inception and it was my first time hearing their frenetic and absurdly brutal death metal heavy style of technical death metal. The group dropped a killer follow up called Void that was also covered here. They were one of the first bands I covered for this column so I'm always happy when things come full circle. On Friday, December 7th the group will release their second full-length, Arcane Dominion, through Amputated Vein Records. We've got an extra early full stream of it for you today and as I know I often say, this really is one you're going to want to check out.
As you can probably guess by me having covered them twice here already, I'm of the opinion that Torturous Inception is without a doubt one of the most impressive and memorable technical brutal death metal bands around. The band has dropped quite a bit of music since 2011 when they started making music under their current name, though as I found out recently, most of the band has been playing together under a prior name dating all the way back to 2005 under the gross-out comical name of Vomitous Rectum. Realizing that now makes a whole lot of sense when it comes to their mature and unique take on technical brutal death metal, it's clearly the byproduct of musicians in sync with each other who keep pushing themselves towards new heights.
If you're new to the band, Arcane Dominion, like their prior works, is built upon a multi-faceted, energetic, and chaotic approach that's divided between brutal death metal, tech-death, and slam in a way I've heard few bands achieve. The biggest downfall of most brutal minded tech-death to me is favoring too much conformity in the way their songs are written and also in the manner in which they combine the brutal and technical aspects together too straightforwardly. This is where Torturous Inception annihilates the competition, as Arcane Dominion thrives on variety, zig-zagging back and forth between their three main core styles in a multitude of ways where the mixture between them changes per song a lot. Even more than prior works, Arcane Dominion, does much to further this end of what they do well, yet achieves that differently here at times by allowing more of the songs to focus primarily on one of the three core facets of their sound. So this makes for some songs that run the gamut more solidly on just the slam heavy style, brutal death focused style, more wholly tech-death style in a way that feels different than their prior material.
In addition, Arcane Dominion sees the band opening up their sound and introducing in some really cool new elements, which ends up being another way the band has found to evolve their sound. Some of the newfound elements are an influx of dissonance woven in between tech-death and brutal slam heavy sections in a way that reminds me of Artificial Brain. I may have simply not latched on to it on prior works, but I can hear some small bits of old-school progressive death metal and old school death metal here and there on some songs that recall Death and Carcass which also feels like new territory for them.
The dual combination of switching things up sound wise and evolving their songwriting style really makes Arcane Dominion one hell of a demented and viciously delicious album with staying power. Truth be told, even if this release wasn't different than their prior works, I'd probably still have liked it because the band already had a specialized well developed sound going on. But, seeing as they really stepped up here and knocked it out of the park in a whole new way, I'm quite impressed by what Arcane Dominion has to offer. So be sure to check out our early stream of the album below. If you're digging it, pre-orders can be placed through their label here and through the band’s Bandcamp here and Bigcartel here. Be sure to follow the group over on the Torturous Inception Facebook Page.
