I’ve been listening to a lot of paradoxes lately. The first was
\nJapanese death metal, which we talked about in the Hellchild
\nreview. Now that I’ve got that idea digested, let’s throw another
\none at you: Christian death metal.<\/p>\n
No, really. Christian death metal. Sounds about as likely as a
\nlasting marriage for Elizabeth Taylor, doesn’t it? But there are
\nindeed bands who follow this strange career path. May God have
\nmercy on us all.<\/p>\n
One such act, Tourniquet, has been banging it out for some time
\nnow. Their latest disc,
\nMicroscopic View Of A Telescopic Realm<\/i>, is spiritual without
\nbeing overtly preachy – except, at times, against some members of
\ntheir own genre.<\/p>\n
Thinking about it, calling Tourniquet – vocalist Luke Easter,
\nguitarist\/vocalist Aaron Guerra and drummer Ted Kirkpatrick – death
\nmetal isn’t quite correct. Sure, they know when it’s time to thrash
\nit out. But musically, there’s a balance on this disc that works
\nwell at some times, and seems to be terribly out of place at other
\ntimes.<\/p>\n
Take the opening track “Besprinkled In Scarlet Horror,” a track
\nthat happily pounds away for a while until – wham! – you hear the
\nGothic strains of a pipe organ. If this weren’t enough, the last
\nmovement of the song throws things into reverse as Tourniquet turns
\nthe song almost into a light-pop round with the vocals. I don’t
\nknow what they were thinking, but they were better off leaving this
\nsong following one style path for the whole trip.<\/p>\n
That being said, there are moments on this track where Easter
\nand crew slam other death metal acts for their lyrical and cover
\nart content (“Words verbose, gory to what end do they serve? \/ Or
\nimages vivid scarlet horrors absurd”) and speed for the pure sake
\nof playing fast (“You say this pace beckons evil spirits \/ But I
\ncare not what you call it \/ To me it’s two hundred beats per
\nminute”). Nice touch.<\/p>\n
Tourniquet could have commited commercial suicide by being
\novertly preachy in their music – something they come close to doing
\non “Besprinkled In Scarlet Horror”. But for the most part, the
\nreligious imagery is kept low-key, and utilized well on tracks like
\n“The Tomb Of Gilgamesh” and “Servant Of The Bones”.<\/p>\n
If there’s any real drawback to
\nMicroscopic View Of A Telescopic Realm<\/i>, it’s that this disc
\nisn’t the easiest to approach, no matter what your views on the
\nspecific genre Tourniquet follows. I think it took me seven listens
\nbefore I could get all the way through this disc without becoming
\nmusically overwhelmed. And I’ll admit, the more you listen to this
\ndisc, the more positive things you’ll find about it. But I question
\nwhether anyone will really want to put that kind of time and effort
\ninto what is essentially a heavy metal CD.<\/p>\n
I don’t know whether Tourniquet is geared towards commercial
\nsuccess, or what lies ahead for them on the map. But if they want
\nto reach a wider audience, they need to make CDs that are more
\napproachable and easier to swallow in one listening.
\nMicroscopic View Of A Telescopic Realm<\/i> eventually proves
\nitself to be a worthy disc, but it takes far too long for that fact
\nto emerge.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":25325,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"artist":[6286],"rating":[5614],"class_list":["post-36531","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-tourniquet","rating-rating-c-plus"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/36531","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/review"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=36531"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/36531\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/25325"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36531"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=36531"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=36531"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}