Vehemency Infuneral is certainly not the first nor last black metal group to hold their grab firmly in the values of old school, underground black metal of two centuries ago, and without any additional elements. 28 tight minutes of hateful black metal is the way things work on their second album Torn from the Abyss, offering little to someone accustomed to compromising and evolving music, but a tad more to someone who still enjoys to look back into the old days with nostalgia.

The short playing time becomes the album’s best feature due to the music’s ultimate predictability: blast beats hammer, tremolo riffs fire and raspy screams proclaim their simple Satanic and nihilistic message, and only rarely the band goes astray from this path, a noteworthy exception being ”A Scent of Death” and its chorus-based structure and occasional choir style backing vocals. Otherwise the songs on Torn from the Abyss don’t differ from each other radically. There’s slight leanings toward melancholic lead melody in every song but the core is always the cold, relentless black metal that is executed with tight precision in a rather professional yet not polished production.

By now, every reader knows where to stand in relation to Torn from the Abyss: are you willing to get into another rather traditional black metal affair, or just pass and look for something more inventive within your black metal? Personally I’m content with the album but then again I’ve recently been exposured to an excess of rather faceless black metal albums, resulting in that none of them truly impress me anymore.