Sinsaenum – Echoes of the Tortured CD Review

Two reasons I am excited about Sinsaenum’s debut, Echoes of the Tortured, is that it sees two of my favorite musicians return to industry after a long (ish) absence. First off we see Joey Jordison (obviously) and secondly we see the return of Sean Zatorsky from the criminally under rated DAATH splitting vocal duties with Mayhem’s Attila Csihar.

It’s not only great to see Joey Jordison back in action but after years of reading his interviews on his love of both Black and Death metal. (I even remember him writing the liner notes for a Deicide “best of” compilation) I always wondered why he never did a more extreme side project. He must have heard me!

Sinsaenum is a Death Metal all-star project which started as collaboration between Joey Jordison and Dragonforce’s Frederic Leclercq. Echoes of the Tortured is an accessible, fun listen. It’s easily digestible Death Metal with a Black Metal glaze and sprinkling of punk in its delivery. One band it brought to mind actually was The Rotted!

Splendor and Agony sets the tone nicely with its fast pace and an awesome chugging section mid song that’s dark and punishing. Army of Chaos is just a tune! It stomps along in a Satyricon kind of way and shows the brilliance of Joey Jordison. He is one of those rare drummers that can lead a song with his drums and his patterns are just as memorable as a tracks riff or melody. Whilst on the subject of Joey’s drumming yes this is the fastest and best drum performance since Slipknot’s first two albums.

Echoes of the Tortured’s downfall is that it has too many interludes plain and simple. Of the 21 tracks on the album you only get 11 actual songs so each song has an introduction pretty much. That’s not to say there isn’t some interesting stuff going on in these tracks Excommunicate and Redemption for example bring to mind when Morbid Angel at their most experimental but I genuinely feel it affects the flow of the songs and I guarantee after a few listens you find yourself just skipping to the actual songs and if you play it on a device with the tracks deleted the album flows fine without them.

That aside, Sinsaenum’s debut is an enjoyable album with a superb line up. If this catches on and becomes a full-time project who knows where it can lead? The potential is there.

Score: 8 out of 10

 

 

 

Echoes of the Tortured Information

Track List:
1. Materialization
2. Splendor And Agony
3. Excummunicare
4. Inverted Cross
5. March
6. Army Of Chaos
7. Redemption
8. Dead Souls
9. 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

Record Label:
Century Media Records

Release date:
July 29th 2016

For fans of…
Satyricon, Goatwhore, Celtic Frost

Check out Sinsaenum on Facebook, and order Echoes of the Tortured here!