TURIN – The Unforgiving Reality In Nothing
Release Date: 12th July 2024
Label: MNRK Heavy
Bandcamp
Genre: Deathcore
FFO: Lorna Shore, Osiah, Distant, To The Grave.
Review By: Jeff Finch
Call my cynical, call me an elitist, call me whatever you want, but anytime a band comes up who can be compared to present day Lorna Shore, I hesitate. I really enjoyed LS prior to their hit ‘To the Hellfire’ and even found some gems in that EP and their follow-up Pain Remains. But they’re a part of a sector of deathcore that I can’t stand, and that’s a band that only seems to write their songs, their melodies, everything around a nasty breakdown and their vocalist sounding like a snarling beast. Those additions into songs can be powerful and exquisitely impactful in the right environment, but when a band writes songs solely based on that breakdown, you can just feel the genre getting watered down with copycats and bands just trying their damnedest to release the next ‘To The Hellfire.’ While today’s band TURIN shares elements of these bands, in terms of their blackened and symphonic elements, they don’t fall into the trap that seemingly countless other bands fall in to; rather, the band focuses on generating music both heavy in the normal sense and heavy in the emotional sense, music that hits your psyche.
The blast beats, the brutally filthy riffs, the layered vocals that make this band sound like they’ve been summoned from the very depths of Hell’s deepest cavities; they are here, and they are unabashedly heavy and unapologetically utilized. They’re intense, visceral, and most importantly, they don’t sound like a band itching for that one hit that sets them for life; no, they sound like a band whose very existence is meant to instill in listeners that sense that they understand what’s going on, the constantly abounding frustration of daily life and how it feels as though they’ve been told to just deal. Moments of reflection and calm hit at points on this record, offsetting some of the more deeply intense sessions; look no further than Hopeless Solutions, the penultimate track on the album. Rife with blistering riffs and drums that can send any listener into a fevered frenzy, the band masterfully imbues the track with feelings of tranquillity, the serene piano outro appearing as the antithesis to some of the more despondent lyrics, such as:
We are torn apart / Born from the ashes / Searching for answers
…
We find salvation in hopeless solutions
The tempo is frantic, but the riffs pulled from the maelstrom hit with fervour, not strummed for the sake of speed, but rather for the sake of setting the tone, allowing listeners to segue brilliantly into an atmospheric interlude of despondency that leads quickly back into the main groove where we listeners are getting pummeled from every angle, tremolo riffs and blast beats abounding.
As a constant listener of death metal, deathcore, and those related genres, the soundscapes the band creates on this album are exquisite; the speed isn’t excessive, the riffs can actually be picked out from among the chaos, matching the gnarly, time signature shifting drum fills, as the band transitions in and out of the main pace on Abyssal, the vocal layering brilliant, allowing listeners to hear the vocals that, per the band, try to capture the rough realities of humanity and living with mental health issues.
Title track, in a sense, The Unforgiving Reality In Nothing, wastes almost no time, warming us up with a beefy riff before hitting us with everything but the kitchen sink; blast beasts, double bass insanity, guitars that hang in the background not matching the literal intensity, but with their elongation, their heft, the ability to be picked out from the maelstrom, bringing more to the sonic landscape and keeping listeners glued to the remainder of the song, allowing oneself to be wowed by the music but not missing the brilliant tempo shifts halfway through, or picking out the cries of ‘mass deception’ in the background. The group is simply unwavering in their intensity, even in those moments of calm, the last minute of the track a point where a listener can reconcile with what they’ve just heard and digest it before they’re hit with another left hook once the next track starts, a fitting metaphor. That next track, Loss, featuring Travis Worland of Enterprise Earth, instantly brings forth the dark, crushing riffs to accompany the constantly pulsating percussion. What makes the song as impactful as it is, in addition to the piano(?) in the chorus, is the guitars’ unwillingness to move beyond those deep chugs while the rest of the band goes off, a point where less is more, as the two vocalists trade filth, the high, nasty shriek of Worland piercing through the sonic veil, contrasting brilliantly with the lows we’ve heard all album long. Meanwhile, the guitar solo rips, and as we come out of it, we’re greeted with a beautiful symphonic soundscape, the closest to ‘hopeful’ we’ve gotten on this album, a perfect segue into our final track Our Reality In Nothing.
By all estimations the most symphonic the band have gotten on this record, the beautiful opening leads into some mid-tempo chugs that briefly match the speed of the drums but quickly retreat; our vocalist makes his presence known at about the midway point of the track before the intensity shifts back into the orchestra for a spell, and back again. The ebb and flow of the song could be seen as jarring to some listeners, but it feels like an optimistic shift when they do take place, akin to the ebb and flow of daily life, and thus gets the nod of approval from this listener.
At the end of the day, while this album can very easily be classified as deathcore, technical death metal, symphonic death metal, whatever you want to name it, and fit among some of the best in the genre(s), it just felt different. Being able to listen and focus my attention on actual riffs, on time signature changes and tempo shifts, and the actual LYRICS on such a behemoth, it felt strange to be coming from a band who I’ve never heard of (my fault). That I could understand the vocalist and the mix was such that nothing was drowned out by anything else, that’s the sign of an album well done by a band focused on making sure they release only the best they could offer. Check it, you’ll dig.
(4.5 / 5)
