In terms of heaviness and aggression, nothing can touch a death metal band in full flight. Those skull crushing riffs, deathlike vocals, and pounding rhythm section make for a breathtaking experience, and that’s precisely what Pandemic Outbreak serve up. Hailing from Gdańsk, Poland, this quartet have been terrorising listeners for a decade, and their second album, Torment Beyond Comprehension, does exactly what it says on the tin, tightening the screws to deliver a truly terrifying 38-and-a-half-minutes of pure, unadulterated, blood-soaked death metal.
A good death metal album isn’t only about the songs, but it is about the atmosphere that those songs create; a certain amount of menace should emanate from the grooves, and that’s exactly what happens with opening blast ‘Beyond My Comprehension’. Opening with a neat drum motif, Pandemic Outbreak have no time to waste on fancy introductions or elongated preambles and set about delivering an abject lesson in old school death metal. It’s all here, from the circular saw riffs to the guttural vocals via the bombastic bass, this is the sound of a band breathing new life into familiar themes and ensures that this is no mere exercise in nostalgia. Listening to this opener (and the whole album) is akin to being locked in a room with the most depraved serial killer; the music sets every fibre of your being on alert and gets the pulse racing into heart attack inducing territory.
It’s been all change in the Pandemic Outbreak camp since their last studio release (2021’s Skulls Beneath The Cross) with only guitarist/vocalist Menzel and bassist Kotwa remaining from that time, yet they still bring a lot of experience and wisdom to this project and ensures that this release flows like a proper album. It isn’t merely a collection of blast beats, rather each song has its own unique personality, meaning that Torment Beyond Comprehension is an album that ebbs and flows perfectly. Even within individual songs (such as ‘Confess Your Sins’), there are wheels within wheels that are constantly turning as the band insert plenty of neat time changes with thrashy sections nestling next to crawling, pummelling moments, and the result is an album that never becomes staid.
Closing with the blood-spattered ‘Ripped Into Pieces’, it feels as if this ending is just a beginning and there is much more to come from Pandemic Outbreak. Watch this space.
- Torment Beyond Comprehension is released via Godz Ov War Productions and is available now.
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Track List:
- Beyond My Comprehension
- Primitive Instincts
- Tales Of The Slaughter
- Confess Your Sins
- Consumed By Flames
- Skinned While Breathing
- Left For Vultures
- Impaled
- Ripped Into Pieces
