TORPOR: ABSCISSION

This year has proven big for music on the darker frontiers. Those harder-nosed sounds in the sphere of new music, and many of the architects within the alternative metal pantheon, both from the underground and slightly more known, have produced their best work yet.

Sludge sentinels TORPOR are the latest to throw their weight around, and it comes in the way of their third long-player, ABSCISSION. An arctic blast that sees a band completely reveling under the iron-grey skies which inspire much of their work.

Following their 2019 release, Rhetoric of the Image, ABSCISSION sees TORPOR (Jon Taylor – guitar/vocals; Lauren Mason – bass/Rhodes / vocals; Simon Mason – drums/electronics/ vocals) resuming hostilities with producer Wayne Adams (JAAW, Petbrick, Big Lad et al) with mastering duties once again undertaken by James Plotkin (Khanate).

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This time TORPOR and Adams debunked from the latter’s London city studio Bear Bites Horse in favour of Giant Wafer Studios in rural Wales, which is said to have inspired the post-apocalyptic thrum that runs all the way through ABSCISSION.

Opening stanza, Interior Gestures, sees TORPOR leading with their most potent weapon. A sonic tsunami, crashing like waves to the shore and destroying everything in its wake, Interior Gestures showcases Taylor’s haemorrhaging tones and Mason’s monolithic bass weight in what is some of the heaviest vignettes the band has delivered so far.

Taylor’s caveman howls are reminiscent of Aaron Turner, and on A Shadow Follows Body, his hearty echoes rise with curled menace as the hypnotic passages lie somewhere between the majesty of YOB and ISIS. Essentially, it’ll have you reaching for your copy of Oceanic and Panopticon, back-to-back (the way they should be listened to).

Aciddie is a tremor from the void. Short stabs of torment with a low-end that puts all your senses on trial. Then there’s the atmospheric black mist of Carbon. Like trying to escape from a straitjacket, Carbon builds with a bruising, cerebral heaviness that’s almost too much to bear.

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Those shades of grey become that much darker on closing encounter, Island of Abandonment. Whilst perennial ambassadors of the void, they completely obliterate it with a sequence of core-shuddering movements that have the same devastating effect as Semtex.  

On ABSCISSION, TORPOR touches upon the hypnotic heaviness largely associated from chief purveyors BIG|BRAVE. However, the Bristol trio explore throughout the more sludge-laden marshlands, and in a search and destroy mission via a series of brutish, overwhelming sounds, TORPOR seem as powerful as ever. Alongside the likes of Orme and fellow label mates, Remote Viewing, TORPOR ensure that the mysterious portals of doom and sludge are as interesting as they’ve ever been.

ABSCISSION is out now via Human Worth. Purchase from Bandcamp.