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CEASELESS TORMENT
The End They Bring

BWK (2014)
Rating: 8/10

Finnish thrashers Ceaseless Torment has been plying their deadly trade since August 2008. The End They Bring is their debut album, featuring eight tracks which in total run for just over 30 minutes. The band is fronted by Sebastian Fredriksson who, alongside Kim Lappalainen, is responsible for the crunching guitar sound too. The duo of bassist Mikko Karppelin and drummer Antti Uuttu complete the line-up.

Ceaseless Torment are responsible for bringing Finnish thrash metal to the masses; instead of merely aping the days of old, they are injecting new energy into the thrash scene. As debut albums go The End They Bring is a classy affair, and certainly boasts a heck of a weight and furious pace at times.

The band play a blackened style of volatile thrash metal that is channelled through Fredriksson’s gruesome rasps; these rasps have a black metal snarl about them, although one is also reminded of the German and Brazilian thrash scene of the 80s in this hostile form of thrashing rage.

Nary a bad track on the album, the quartet keep things mid-tempo for the most part, and this is where the weight really works. Instead of relying on formulaic chugs, Ceaseless Torment inject some interesting pattern shifts as the percussion rolls, rattles and thunders. When the band does up the pace, the likes of ‘Craving For Revenge’ and ‘High Mortality’ come across as really nasty exercises that reek of Sodom at their most despicable.

While paying homage to the old school thrash scene, this debut album offers so much more than mimicry in that it has such a robust passion about it which spews forth from the clear, yet angry guitar sound and the belligerent bass. ‘Genocide (Spreading Your Disease)’ and ‘Suffer Ceaseless Torment’ really pummel the senses, and yet without a hint of derivation.

As modern thrash albums go, this one is a prime example of how to create the speed and agility of a scene that is decades old but also fill it with your own character. The result is a frothing opus of menace and mayhem which is summed up nicely with the aggressive rampage of ‘Apocalyptic Battle’, which is one of my favourite tracks on the album, and showcases Fredriksson’s talent as a vocalist who boasts enough sneer to remove flesh.

Rarely have I heard a new thrash band so vigorous yet precise and concentrated. I put this experience up there with Demon Prayers’ (Evoke The Pain) and Nervosa’s (Victim Of Yourself) as being one of the best thrash records to kick start 2014.

Neil Arnold

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