‘Sinister Death’ is the newest release by Polish Metal warriors Tortured Corpse and it brings the old school sound big time. It sounds like an unearthed relic from the Golden Age across the board from composition to production, imagine ‘Scream Bloody Gore’-era Death mixed with early Pestilence with more brutal New York-type vocal work like for instance something like Incantation. Speaking of ‘Scream Bloody Gore’-era Death, these guys went all the way with the influences here and threw a cover of ‘Zombie Ritual’ from the classic debut as well as a take on Masacre’s ‘Corpse Grinder’.
This is fast to medium-paced hard rocking stuff with lots of skank beats, I found the title track ‘Sinister Death’ has some stand out parts, great big heavy riffs with eerie-sounding guitar leads over top. Low and wet vocals with what sounds like different band members contributing which adds some texture particularly noticeable during the first song ‘Chamber of Gore’.
A ‘Heavy Metal’ type of Death Metal band, very classic late-1980’s/early-1990’s sound without leaning into Thrash elements too much – very much ‘Death Metal’ Death Metal not Thrash dressed up in the attire (no disrespect to Thrash). It’s outrageous, it has a sense of fun(?!) it’s like a prop skeleton at the Halloween store in it’s charm; a macabre musical equivalent of a Horror B-movie afternoon matinee.
Three originals sauced and tossed with a couple covers for good measure (with a notably crazy as fuck splattering gore sample between the second and third songs) – this is a instance where the band clearly had a blast hanging out and playing together, possibly drinking 1000 beers, and you can hear it here in the music and with the choices of covers it’s a short yet good time to be had with these Poles.
