Toranaga U.K. – A New Order – EP Review

Imagine Johann Sebastian Bach — master of counterpoint and divine dissonance — standing at the edge of some smouldering battlefield, his wig singed, his harpsichord shattered, and in his trembling hand… the battered cassette tape of A New Order by Toranaga U.K.

What would he say? Likely nothing. He’d be deafened by the opening assault of “Desecration”, a movement of such crushing rhythmic clarity and mathematical precision that it might have reminded him of the Brandenburgs — if the Brandenburgs had been played on chainsaws and shouted through the cracked mask of an avenging angel.

There is a structural elegance to this EP that a classical enthusiast cannot ignore. The arrangement of themes, the recurrence of motifs, the duelling guitars (worthy successors to Vivaldi’s concerti battles) — these are not random acts of distortion. This is thrash fugue. The intricacy of the guitars in “Desecration,” weaving in and around Duffy’s commanding vocal timbre (a voice seemingly hewn from basalt), is no less virtuosic than the cataclysmic finales of a Mahler symphony.

The title track, “A New Order,” is not so much a song as it is a tone poem. Its atmosphere is dark and evocative; it conjures a Wagnerian dread — the sense that a pantheon has collapsed and a new god, more brutal and less forgiving, has taken the throne. The staggered rhythms beneath its core riff are positively Stravinskian, recalling the Rite of Spring riots in their off-kilter savagery. And much like Stravinsky, Toranaga is unafraid of the brutal majesty of repetition. They hammer home their theme like a heretic crushed beneath a sacred stone.

But then… then comes “The Shrine.”I stood. I stood up. For this is not mere thrash — it is a Requiem Mass for the Old Gods. The chordal architecture, the economy of the phrasing, the way the riffs breathe like slow-burning incense in a ruined basilica… it has that same aching spiritual weight one finds in Arvo Pärt’s Tabula Rasa, only here the violins are replaced by molten steel and divine fury.

And finally, “Sword of Damocles,” we arrive at the EP’s final act — a stormy finale worthy of Beethoven himself. It’s a piece steeped in fatalism, drawn from classical mythology, wrapped in shadow and violence. The production, handled by Steve Kilpatrick, renders every note like a marble statue chipped to reveal a bleeding heart. This is music for reckoning. A danse macabre for the post-industrial age.

What Toranaga U.K. has done with A New Order is akin to Haydn reinventing the symphony at the twilight of his career. It is a revitalisation steeped not in nostalgia but in legacy — a project that takes the fierce structure of classical tradition (theme, development, recapitulation, and glorious coda) and bolts it onto the engine of modern metal warfare.

It is exquisite.
A barbaric sonata.
A thrash requiem in four parts.

Release the tigers. Bring down the sword. A new order, indeed.
Score 8/10
Track List
1 – Desecration.mp3
2 – A New Order.mp3
3 – The Shrine.mp3
4 – Sword of Damocles.mp3
Label: Independant
Release: 19th May 2025

For all things Toranaga UK, click HERE and to purchase the EP, click HERE