Concerted wailing through bone-holes and desiccated flesh serenade the coming tarantella entranced march of ghouls through the labyrinth ahead, resurrected and recast as husks within the realm of Bilzen, Belgium-based death metal quintet TORTURERAMA as they return for this sophomore full-length album. ‘The Elaborate Theatre of the Macabre‘ more-or-less resembles pure old school the ethos that’d driven these folks back in the early 2010’s but refines their action into something more cohesive. No less informed by the personage of Swedish death metal’s best known era the resulting is admirably pre-1993 in terms of calling upon its niche, carrying punkish horror-themed feeling of old without falling into the doldrums of one-upping the old ways, instead wielding said medium like old underground pros.

Torturerama formed circa 2008 with the goal of tributing early 90’s ‘old school’ death metal style with a sound designed to resemble early Swedish death metal. Their first EP (‘Left as Remains‘, 2010) was a Skogsberg-mastered joint that’d built itself around mid-paced songs with a rocking ‘Clandestine‘ (or, early Furbowl) sort of feel and a hit or two of semi-melodic Dismember worship nearby, something modestly varietal beyond the norm at the time. Note that the bar was high in the moment (Repugnant, Kaamos, et al.) and this was a fairly different band in some sense. A number of years later their second EP (‘It Begins at Birth‘, 2014) hit closer to the gloom of Vanhelgd and the barreling of Interment as they’d developed a less congested sense of Swedeath movement, still verging on punkish death n’ roll at the fringes. Naturally a debut full-length (‘Close Encounters of the Morbid Kind‘, 2015) was the apex of their initial ambitions, delivering the ‘old school’ Swedeath styled release their two EPs had promised.

That first era of the band (again) collectively carried a rocking, punkish quasi-death n’ roll side which stood out next to contemporaries like Entrapment and Mordbrand and was ~reasonably compared to stuff like Death Breath or nearby at the time. The band would go on hiatus around 2018 and more formally resurrect beyond the pandemic years, finding their longtime bassist now the vocalist and a new second guitarist + drummer recruited. Over a decade beyond their previous album Torturerama generally pull back to the fundamentals here on ‘The Elaborate Theatre of the Macabre‘, barely sidling up into the circa 1993 scheme of things as the melodic and rock inspired notions of the past are smoothed into crunchier, simpler death metal pieces.

Thrashing late 80’s Sodom-esque riffs, truly grotesque vocal roar and even some pitch-shifted gargling set up opener “Landscapes of the Cursed” to drop a blanket of nuclear doom cross the listener as Torturerama reintroduce themselves. That introductory spree does a great job of taking the existing fan back to that late 2000’s/early 2010’s of OSDM revivalism, less concerned with hybridization and moreso achieving the real thing (re: F.D.A. Records, Dark Descent etc. early days) and that feeling persists through the full listen though the band’ve changed their tune a little bit since. Their slow-burning, doomed ‘Mental Funeral‘ (or, Maim) etched step through “Zombie Disposal” doesn’t yet reach for the nauseated rocking n’ tongue-swallowing lurch of the past just yet but comes close.

“Reap What You Sow” is, to my ear, something more signature per my memory of Torturerama as it brings out this rocking Celtic Frost meets death n’ roll swagger in ’em, reading as cut from that Death Breath kind of shake where ‘Clandestine‘ and Autopsy-eeked interest cross wires in a tuneful way. The big and hairy distorted bass guitar tone that features throughout ‘The Elaborate Theatre of the Macabre‘ is best used within this type of steadier, mid-to-slow paced song and would ultimately become one of my favorite traits here. Side A closer “Repulsive Smut Supreme” is arguably no less signature, a mid-paced punkish rattler which breaks things up with a gloom-sowing break in its final third. I don’t know if those two key tracks fully showcase the album’s reach but you’ll get a pretty good idea if you can hang with the band’s classic nuclear Swedeath sound for ~35 minutes.

Apart from “Curb Stomp Shake” the majority of the second half of ‘The Elaborate Theatre of the Macabre‘ pulls in darker horror-obsessed tonality and slowed pacing. “Abracadavra” is a bit of everything beyond its slow-pulled doomed first half and stands out for that reason while closer “Lucid Nightmare” acts as a prime endpoint, a jogging and slinking creep of a song that ends Torturerama‘s thread on an appropriately dismal note. The full listen could use one more thrasher a la the opener but overall I couldn’t ask for a better spread in exploration of the band’s classicist sound.

At just about 35 minutes in runtime and split pretty evenly between its eight songs Torturerama‘s return couldn’t be any more classics-minded in effect with regard for the niche they’ve embodied since birth. I don’t know if I’d consider ‘The Elaborate Theatre of the Macabre‘ a strictly “bigger, better” kind of deal but rather a sharpening of all available tools into something less revivalist and moreso timelessly gory and straightforward. They’re writing better death metal songs here, concerning themselves less with melodic death and death n’ roll overall versus what flows and fits into their ideal. Fans of the earliest, most horrified Stockholm adjacent sounds of Swedish death metal should be well served in this respect, just don’t head in looking for anything newfangled. Otherwise appropriately grimy production values, a great new logo and prime album art via Skaðvaldur help to grease the rack here. A moderately high recommendation.

TORTURERAMA ‘The Elaborate Theatre of the Macabre’

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