Artist: Tyrant Wrath
Title: Torture Deathcult
Type: Album
Label: Battlegod Productions

I was having a discussion with a friend recently who opined with some force that in terms of artistic criticism, to define something as ‘average’ is no better than to condemn outright. At first I disagreed but as our increasingly loud debate wore on, I began to understand his point - namely, if the purpose of art is to illicit an emotional response within the observer/listener, then for an individual to define something as ‘average’ signifies that the art presented to them has had no impact whatsoever and has failed to resonate with them in any way. And that my friends is condemnation, whichever way you want to slice it. With this in mind, I guess you can see where I’m going with this and yup, Tyrant Wrath are a classic case of being average - so, so average.

Yes, on the surface, there’s nothing wrong with ‘Torture Deathcult’ - it’s proper black/death/thrash metal, performed adequately, well-produced, loads of riffs, roared vocals and... that’s it. If the above list is all that’s required to get your head a-banging and your fist a-pumping then rush out and invest without delay. Not a microsecond of this is standout, each riff a vague reworking of all the classics - a smidgeon of Emperor here, a dash of Dissection there - with very little indeed to inject any sense of individuality or identity into proceedings. Not vicious enough to go toe-to-toe with the extreme end of the genre, not epic enough to summon up that windswept exhilaration that the aforementioned masters were so good at conjuring, not atmospheric enough to mix it with the orthodox elite, it simply trudges along delivering beige, off-the shelf aggression.

They are trying, that is obvious – ‘Revelation of Life’ boasts a vaguely soaring blast section that does its best to raise the bar and ‘Till Inter’ lurches along energetically enough in a mid-period Emperor gallop but by and large, ‘Torture Deathcult’ is a pretty dull slog through dry, mid-paced mediocrity. The whole experience is compounded by closing track ‘I, Above’ which, when one realizes it clocks in at 10+ minutes, causes only despondency to kick in. It does nothing to justify its length and simply serves to underline the unexciting nature of what’s on offer here. Very average. And as previously established, that’s NOT a compliment.

http://www.myspace.com/tyrantwrath

Frank Allain

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