Sinsaenum – “Echoes Of The Tortured” [Album Review]

In recent weeks former Slipknot sticksman Joey Jordison has gone from being AWOL to appearing in more and more media columns along with appearances in public at the odd award ceremony. Having gone into hiding following a couple of aborted post-Slipknot projects and with his now well-documented illness having almost robbed us of one of metals most skilled musicians, Jordison is back with a new band who, featuring members of Dragonforce and Loudblast alongside Jordison, could be billed as an extreme metal supergroup.

Echoes Of The Tortured is the first fruits of this supergroup and, made up of eleven tracks and a bunch of interludes, it’s good to hear Jordison back where he belongs and doing what he does best. A ferociously traditional death metal album, Echoes Of The Tortured is a juggernaut of blasting drums and death metal riffing.

Offerings like “Final Curse” and “Inverted Cross” see Jordison and his bandmates rattle this stuff out with flawless precision. Then again, with a pedigree like this group has and Jordison performing with the kind of unbridled ferocity he showed on Iowa, it’s unsurprising that there are many moments on this album where the various components of the band lock together and it all sounds so utterly effortless. Add in a hint of black metal here, a dash of Slipknot there and a good dollop of Morbid Angelesque sludginess and you have yourselves tracks like “Army Of Chaos”, where Sinsaenum sound unstoppable.

When I first saw the 21 tracks on this track listing my heart sank because, let’s be honest, there is nothing more soul-sapping than 21 continuous tracks of incoherent blasting. On the other hand though, minus the interludes thus running at eleven tracks long, it’s hard to find fault with the crushing demonstration of brutality from one of modern metals most iconic figures.

Echoes Of The Tortured Track Listing:

01. Materialization
02. Splendor And Agony
03. Excommunicare
04. Inverted Cross
05. March
06. Army Of Chaos
07. Redemption
08. Dead Souls
09. Lullaby
10. Final Curse
11. Condemned To Suffer
12. Ritual
13. Sacrifice
14. Damnation
15. The Forgotten One
16. Torment
17. Anfang Des Albtraumes
18. Mist
19. Echoes of the Tortured
20. Emptiness
21. Gods of Hell

Run Time: 62:16
Release Date: July 29, 2016

Check out the track “Splendor And Agony”