Human Worth – 15th September 2023
Christopher Nosnibor
It may not be apparent from my review output, bur I am uncomfortably familiar with experiencing torpor. That weight that descends like a cloak and simply loving is as much as you can manage, and in no time, half an hour, an hour has elapsed, and… what? Where does the time go? Where does your life go? For many of us, work eats our lives, as does just doing whatever it takes to keep afloat and on top of things. I will admit to being less familiar with abscission, which I had to look up to find that it’s ‘the shedding of various parts of an organism, such as a plant dropping a leaf, fruit, flower, or seed. In zoology, abscission is the intentional shedding of a body part, such as the shedding of a claw, husk, or the autotomy of a tail to evade a predator,’ according to Wikipedia.
I get the sense from listening to Abscission that this shedding is rather more metaphorical, and that the album is more of a work of catharsis, shedding skins and layers of shit, of unwanted emotions, to feel lighter, to emerge somehow freer, less encumbered by emotional baggage. But this is also something else. More than merely a shedding of dead skin, the experience of listening to Abscission is closer to tearing the skin from your body, the flesh from your bones to escape your corporeal being. Bloody, brutal, unspeakable pain.
On Abscission, Torpor bring the weight, the crushing weight that drags you down at every limb, your spine, your guts, your heart. The first track, ‘Interior Gestures’ is pure leaden punishment. It starts with megalithic raging, guitars like slabs of basalt, the guttural vocals growling and snarling beneath it all, before shifting into a dark yet graceful expanse, and for a moment, you can breathe, and feel a radiant energy. There’s something about slow, heavy music which is, in some instances, uplifting, and Torpor’s gentler passages are truly magnificent, delicate, elegant, even.
‘As Shadows Follow Body’ has a few delicate moments, but for the most part, it’s simply devastating. If the likes of Neurosis and Amenra are perhaps obvious touchstones, where Torpor stand apart is that they make both bands sound like PWL era Kylie. This goes beyond heavy. When everything is churning low and slow, you feel your muscles wilt and body sag. It’s how you perhaps imagine being hit by a truck, or the implosion of a submarine where the intense pressure simply collapses your body. I may be alone or in a very small minority in imagining these things, but sometimes, articulating the experience of particularly intense music requires something of a stretch when it comes to articulation, and most similes and metaphors simply fall a long way short.
I can’t decide – perhaps because my brain is melting – if it’s appropriate or ironic that listening to Torpor should induce torpor. I’m feeling numb, weary, my back and libs ache, likely from spending hours observing bad posture practices during my dayjob before returning to the same position to sift take care of life admin and review submissions. And listening to Abscission only seems to accentuate my aches, because listening to it feels like carrying a heavy load, for miles, in intense heat.
‘Accidei’ locks into a grinding repetition that’s reminiscent of early Swans or Godflesh, and crawls sluggish and sludgishly, before the album’s shortest song, ‘carbon’ ploughs into the depths and tears the ground apart.
‘Island of Abandonment doesn’t so much plunge new depths of heavy, as sound like the real-time death of an underworld god. It does pick up the pace around the midpoint, building to a sustained crescendo that feels like a typhoon. By the end of its enormous eleven-minute assault, I find myself at a loss. I’ve been covering heavy music for a long time, and have spent it developing my descriptive vocabulary. But words fall short, so short, in the face of this. This is another world. Enter it at your peril.
AA
Aural Aggravation 