TORII, the American band from Arkansas with two members that mixes Black, Death and Doom Metal has recently independently presented their newest work, the album "A Judgment Divine" released on June 8, 2018 bringing the duo Bill Masino and Eric May aligning the alchemy of styles into six truly amazing tracks.

And I must confess that after so much time immersed in the Scandinavian Black Metal scene crossing the ocean into the American Black scene is a great reality shock, even more so in the face of so many changes in the extreme sectors of the Metal world-wide.  I must admit that sometimes we need to look at things with a little more open vision and TORII is really the kind of band you need to have a clear head to spot. With a hazy Blackened Death metal charge attached to Sludge influences the musicians present something definitely different in "A Judgment Divine," and if you are a connoisseur of styles you will notice the difference at the very beginning in "Army of Sand" that starts this sinister album that advances to riffs of agony as Eric's vocal completes the infernal scenario. The whole track runs down slower lines but not with less profusion.

"Theory of Existence" brings a great deal of distortion that initially catches the attention of listeners but declines to a solid block of Death Metal hovering over Black Metal in haunting guitar lines and fleshy and greasy vocals.  At the same time, it adopts a minimalist line that works much better than in previous albums.  This coupled with the mesmerizing bass line and thundering drumming gives the pieces of the guitar definitely a cleaner sound that bridges the most experimental timing of the tracks.  The guitar, sparse and heavily distorted, enters the mix, injecting some Psychedelic influence into the track as it reaches its final moments, disappearing rapidly until only a dark and whispered vowel remains.  The feeling is like that of a modern and polished horror film.

"The Grand Banquet" in turn begins in a similar climate but in a few seconds migrates to a bizarre instrumental line that seems to pop up like a whirlwind within the sucking band spinning all the tones like a whirlwind, and evidently the grotesque and poisoned vocals of Eric continue to hover over a few moments of incoherence or sonic dysrhythmia, I think this is an interesting factor of the American lines that change the melody in a rude way but that fits the atmosphere very well. Do not totally cling to the snarling and hypnotizing lines so far as "Dirus Serpens" dislodges the album and brings another side of the duo that plunged into the Black Metal inflexibly and at the same time reflective becoming nothing less than soft and pragmatic in 4:19 minutes of total instrumental, so we can say that this is a pleasant surprise within this short album.

But we get back to more fickle lines before this work is over.  We talk about the nebula "Gates of Paradise II - The Cold Masque of Romance" and I really like how Eric's vocals migrate to roar and rusty Death Metal lines at this point.  The atmosphere also makes great use of dissonant chord progressions and minimalist drumming that jump to drums that emerge with intensity shifting the frequency to a more Sludge sonority even in terms of feeling like melody lines. It is easy to say that this pair of musicians are true sound scientists who attribute their chemistry to the mixture of the main elements of the blackest lines of the Metal, but which result in a totally unique and different characteristic of many bands of the sector, definitely the best work of the band. Highlight for the track "A Judgment Divine".