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TALSUR
Tormented

Self-released (2018)
Rating: 9/10

I’ve always been a bit on and off when it comes to hearing violins and other similar instruments on heavy metal albums, but in the case of UK act My Dying Bride and Russia’s Talsur I can more than make an exception.

Tormented is a wonderfully atmospheric, doom-drenched opus from this one-man band – a chap who has released a handful of evocative slow-motion albums over the years.

This new experience is similarly morose as a wistful yet sorrowful violin leads us in via ‘Lamentoso’, before the despondent strains of the seven-minute ‘Demorior’ make sure we’re not sitting too comfortably by the woodland fire. Indeed, Talsur has once again provided a musical soundtrack to despair and loneliness; a brooding mire of the morose where all rhythms ponder in slow, mournful dirges to a lazy lyrical drool where our rather unhappy composer moans “I regret I exist”, but some days… don’t we all?

Nevertheless, this album is a thing of beauty amidst the despondency and seemingly inconsolable tones; the vocals veer from clear yet bellowing croons to guttural groans of bleak matter as each track laboriously oozes and further glum lyrical expressions in the form of “You have no sense to live” and the equally negative “I just wish to hide in my own, so deep”. Indeed, Talsur creates reclusive and elusive notes with each aching segment eager to shun the light and every gloomy slab feeling lengthier than the last one.

‘I Bequeath’ remains equally stirring as that violin drifts into the night air, one imagining embers of the fire soaring into blackness and a lonely, isolated spirit wandering almost aimlessly in some sort of woodland limbo. The music remains as that dragging, gaping maw of blackness as Talsur reflects, “I’lll die in blackened shadows of my own misery”.

It could be argued then that Tormented is an acquired taste; a deep, throbbing opus that is neither doom or death metal. Sure, all pace is stripped away, but the suicidal and ethereal quality somehow seems too haunting to be considered as doom. Either way, it makes for an engaging listen, the music always plodding and heaving yet enticing as ‘Waters Of Loss’ eerily creeps to a ghostly piano; why am I getting hints of Ghost initially with this lachrymal outpouring of grief?

As the old oak beams strain and heave, we’re once again drifting into an ethereal darkness as funereal chimes seep into blacker shadows; the guitar sound offers up a genuine, stripped back doom roll as Talsur’s medieval barks snap “How do you feel this hopelessness, Instead of world you hate? You sang yourself a black mass, Begging for mercy from your own grave” as again there’s that mystical and almost cosy fireside glare amidst the blankets of gloom.

Yes, the songs are long, but damn I can’t help be bewitched by the stormy rumble of the foetid ‘Bleeding’, which is a hideous fusing of Saint Vitus and Candlemass and yet something else, something beyond the black in its lyrical guile and treachery.

‘Mortal Beloved’ returns to that rustic traipse, meanwhile, the clearer vocal sweeps echo through the brain like a candle flame lapping at the walls of a woodland cabin. Again I feel alone, the whispers of the night caressing the neck, and I’m unsure if I’m to be toyed with or simply suffocated by the whole mournful experience.

‘Regrets’ offers up another classic doom metal riff; the lyrics can’t get more Gothic and dread-filled as Talsur groans “Feel the fear of immortal pierces you from inside. Desolated. Exhausted – destroyed the place you hide. Between these walls of madness I’ve tried to seek the calm. Wish to deserve forgiveness with my name on tombstone”.

Elsewhere, there’s ‘Sanctuary Of Sinners’, where the violin again comes to the fore – it flirts with that murky trudge as Talsur warns “Timeless depth of dark awaits”. I’m fully aware of such endless horrors and meet them when the 13-minute ‘Tormented By Fate’ comes tinkling in on a haunting piano before the sea of black guitars wash over all and sundry like a blanket of enveloping silt. “Obey to me – I will allow you die” bellows Talsur, and boy am I thankful that I can possibly escape this foreboding composition as those plodding structures cavort with stark piano droplets.

And there I am, alone again, in the forest, jolted awake, hoping it was just a nightmare. Talsur is a dark magician, and Tormented unravels as a tapestry of wondrous morose majesty.

Neil Arnold

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