Torture Pulse
Plague Poetry

February 2010
Released: 2010, Witches Brew
Rating: 3.0/5
Reviewer: Luxi Lahtinen

There´s no end to the old school death metal slaughter, is there? Nope, I guess there´s not as long as bands like the Finns Torture Pulse can keep on churning out venom, blood and entrails from their merciless, limb-crushing carbon-black death machine.



As short background info, Torture Pulse features Kimmo Korkala on guitar from shortly lived Finnish cult death metallers Mythos. It's gotta be assumed that the band won Witches Brew´s attention - this legendary underground metal label, to their side with their 5-song demo, SECOND VENOM, that was released in 2008 already.



So what makes Torture Pulse so special then? Well, I guess nothing. But this does not mean that they suck or anything like that – actually far from that if you just adore all what bands like Nihilist, Carnage, Grave, Dismember, etc. used to be in their demo days. There´s some shameless early Swedish underground death metal worship going on here, on the band´s 10-track debut album PLAGUE POETRY. It´s all good for what it is – and I am sure many people appreciate Torture Pulse´s efforts in working their way back to those days when this utterly heavy, crisp and downtuned Swedish death metal sound was just about to explode with real mass success around the underground world, and rule from those days on.



PLAGUE POETRY reveals that ugly beast content-wise that we have seen and heard so many times before already, but its teeth are still sharp enough to cut and rip our flesh, and to make us suffer in slight enjoyment even. The whole album is like a great handshake to the past (Swedish) death metal scene that surely can be appreciated and understood to a certain extent. The only bad thing is that Torture Pulse are kind of a bit late with their own warfare for old school death metal, sort of coming like in the 2nd wave to the battle, and trying to prove their massive killing capacity. They look ugly and sound lethal, but so do so many other troops today with similar weaponry that Torture Pulse are carrying on this very album in question. Be my guest and draw your own conclusions from all this.