Unholy metal from the holy land! Israel is one of those places where bands get recognition just for being from there and it probably is a hard task for them to succeed. A few do make it through to greater things such as Salem, Orphaned Land and Melechesh but none of them are doing quite what Tsorer are and playing old school, back to basics, blasphemous black metal within the underground, without any care of major recognition. I am not sure how well received they would be but expect the duo who are Tom D and Avner would be vilified by the moral majority on home soil whilst the aforementioned can get away with their craft as there is either something life-affirming about it or they have scarpered out the country.
Tsorer are a contrast right down to their spiky, near illegible logo and their biblical and apocalyptic cover art, one gets the feel from this that the path they have chosen is one that will see the very cleansing of the world, but is their music any good? The simple answer to this is yes. As ‘Misanthrope’ crawls in slowly with gnarly and festering vocals one is reminded of old Darkthrone and a bit of Aura Noir as this craggy beast gears up and limbers off. It’s not doing anything you have not heard loads of times before but it is certainly doing it with conviction. There is a fist slamming and pulverising demeanour behind this and then guitars come in to scythe away before the song abruptly ends and the next, ‘Sodom’ swaggers in and has your head-banging at its meaty delivery. There are some great underlying guitar melodies lurking beneath the primitivism like the impetuously weaving guitar refrain on ‘Again’ (they like the one-word song titles) and these really get their hooks into you.
Sounds of battle are offered on ‘Gifts’ and the underlying feel of psychedelic guitar nuances also begins to shine through adding a slightly different sheen on the music as the singer rasps away. ‘Old’ does exactly as described although I did find myself waiting for a death grunt which never came, still the sluggish bass heavy rhythm more than makes up for that as does the speedy burst that the track piles into. There are some witchy sounding (again somewhat psychedelic) keyboards here that are rather unexpected and remind a bit of Negura Bunget The album lasts just the right time with nine hymns coming in at around the 40 minute mark. As we go towards the end there are lots of strange ‘did I really hear that or not’ moments of sonic atmosphere which along with old fashioned cleaving mindset really add to the overall feel. This is not only a debut release from Tsorer but also a damn fine one and well worth checking out.
http://www.myspace.com/thosewhowalkthepath
