Welcome back metalheads to another episode of The Great Metal Debate podcast. It's me Xander again and today I'm going to be talking about the Finnish goregrind band known as Torsofuck and their new album Postpartum Exstasy - the band's first album in 19 years!
In the year 2004, I was between the ages of 12 and 13 years old. At this time in my life, the heaviest bands that I knew of were: Slipknot, Lamb of God, Hatebreed, Killswitch Engage, Shadows Fall and Atreyu. Little did young Xander know, one of the most brutal bands of all time had released their debut album titled Erotic Diarrhea Fantasies. It wouldn't be until many years later when I was 19 or 20 when I discovered the infamous song "Raped by Elephants".
We all seem to have that sort of love/hate relationship with Torsofuck mainly due to the first half of most of their songs being sound clips from either real porn flicks or some B horror film. If the sound clips weren't so long, we would probably get into the music itself. This is evident in the new album title track "Postpartum Exstasy" in the way that it was way too much like their song "Pussy Mutilation" from the first album. Both tracks have the majority of it being movie clip filler.
The only difference is that instead of the whole Blood Sucking Freaks intro, you instead hear someone screaming in anguish for the first 2 minutes of the 4 and a half minute runtime. I guess I'm just slightly annoyed that in almost 20 years, the band hasn't seemed to improve much.
"Self Dismemberment" does the exact same thing. The band Mortician seems to have a similar issue especially with their older albums yet more people have heard of and are fans of Mortician and they are well respected in the scene. Torsofuck have their own form of street cred but it's probably not as well received by most metal fans. I will say the song "The Pig" is probably my favorite song on this new album mainly because it has one of the shorter intros at only 28 seconds out of the 5 minute track. It's good to have a song that is less bullshit and more business. "Animal Lover" only has an 18 second intro but it's a much shorter song.
Despite the vocalist Mikko Friberg being an absolute monster when it comes to his capabilities of sounding like a creature, every live video I have seen doesn't seem to show him projecting his voice loud enough to stand out among the rest of the instruments. This reminds me of how Visceral Disgorge is live. The vocals are too quiet outside of studio mixing.
Let's talk about the musicians. If you're looking for groovy guitar riffs or solos or any type of structure outside of downtuned chugs, you won't find it here. Torsofuck has always been the type of band that is very simplistic in their nature and they aren't about being musicians. They are about being heavy and gross. If you're looking for something loud, purposely offensive and obnoxious; you've found it. This has always been the main goal of the band.
You know what the problem is with this record? It's 15 years too late. Maybe if this album had come out in 2008, they could've played some of the new tracks like "Necropervert" or "Retarded Anal Whore" during the band's final live show in 2009 before they split up for the 3rd time. Each song on this new album just sounds like the same structure that they used in every song on the previous album. That is both a good and bad thing. It's bad because it's repetitious but good because Mikko hasn't lost his vocal capabilities over the years unlike Antti Bowman from Demilich which is another brutal band from Finland who hasn't put out an album in 30 years.
If you enjoy metal that is closely related to the noise genre, then this will be directly up your alley but if you want something with a little more heart and soul put into the music and lyrics then you could find it in the many other subgenres that metal has to offer.