Kansas City’s Torn the Fuck Apart (hitherto known as TTFA) don’t like religion, particularly Christianity and all things Christ related. One look at the cover art, the album title and song titles like “Bashed in Prophets”, “Decapitated Disciples”, “Father of Filth” as well as the numerous samples from movies and TV (Louis CK, George Carlin etc)  eschewing the same vitriol for God and his flock make it pretty obvious. The question is, are they serious?

Plying a mish mash of death metal styles from brootal death metal, a little tech death, some Floridan styled classic death metal and a some goregrind, it’s hard to gauge TTFA to determine if they are a truly serious, Christ hating death metal band or more of a gimmick, purposely overdoing a steadfast death metal trope, and the delivery of the music isn’t really helping as its  a bit all over the place stylistically. There’s super deep growled  almost gurgled goregrind vocals, there’s lots of slams, and there’s a few twiddly bits and lots of blasting, but I’m never really sure if the band is committed to any of them other than their hate of Christ in the lyrics.

The production is decently burly, again mixing a little of all the above styles, and bassist seems to be a the centerpiece of the band, delivering a more technical twangy and twiddly backbone than the fairly base level death metal ruckus that the rest of the band deliver. None of it terrible, and a few times the band do settle into a decent moment here and there such as the surprisingly melodic solo that breaks out in “Our Serpent Savior”, the the clean break  and solo in “Dead Religion” or even the sudden acoustic instrumental “Purgatorium”, which all stand out like a sore thumb amid the rest of the  admittedly dumbed down material.

Whereas fellow Kansas City death metalers Marasmus were intently focused on a singularly repetitive style of death metal with their 2012 release, Mountains of Dead, TTFA are a little all over the place and don’t seem sure of their final sound. I’m wondering if a merging of two Kansas City death metal bands might produced something a little more memorable?

 

[Visit the band's website]

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