Tort is yet another success from Spain’s blossoming doom scene. Spawned from the same fetid breeding ground that produced Eight Hands for Kali, Graveyard, and Warchetype, and featuring ex-members of Lords of Bukkake and Cuerno, Tort was formed out of a desire to play something other than “sad and slow doom”. Their debut for Totalrust is a galloping slice of crusty sludge and doom with nods to High on Fire and Hellhammer. Thrash, doom, sludge, filth caked spatters of death… What’s not to like?

As you would expect from the expressed intent of the band, this isn’t another dour, melancholic doom record. “Vallaha” gets things started with a swinging rhythmic gallop and throaty, rasping vocals and “Cannibals of Marrat” follows with more midpaced pummel and some churning sludge. “Fire Rose vampire” is the fastest track and sounds like a crusty confluence of High on Fire’s thrashier moments and Eyehategod-style sludge.

They toss in plenty of slow stuff with two longer tracks that slightly more than half of the record’s runtime. “Gnosis of the Dead” and “Earl Estruch”, move with that familiar slow doom saunter and slow motion sludge groove. “Earl Estruch” sounds like a lost track from the first Lords of Bukkake full length, albeit with deeper, throatier vocals and the atmosphere of toxic urban decay swapped for some old fashioned deathly grime. “Gnosis…” is built on a creeping riff that scales up and down and stays down tempo for the most part.

Tort have come up with something that sounds like High on Fire if they smoked a bong load of sludge from the floor of Autopsy’s morgue. There’s nothing quite like a solid combination of hefty grooves, thrashing gallops and a heavy dose of old fashioned slow as fuck heaviness. Score another win for Totalrust.

[Visit the band's website]

---

Comments