The ninth disc from the German band Torment, is released, in order to celebrate their twenty five years in music. Despite of these twenty five years in the business, their last release will not reconcile the listeners. The vocals (Jorn Ruter) are quite sympathetic and the guitars (Carsten Overbeck) are quite simple, since all the melodies are based on three and five chords’ successions. In the meanwhile, the drummers’ presence (Chris Gripp) makes the difference with his great abilities, as he gives a hard and outside sound. They describe their sound as thrash n’ roll, but the “Tormentizer” release proves this description rather wrong. For good measure, they sound more like punk! This album is a confusion of metal, rock and punk and I can say that at one point they lose the game. Tracks such as “We Are The Boys”, “The Ones You Love To Hate” and “Politics And Religion” could as well be considered as the  zenith of punk!( and sound somehow like Dropkick Merphys, No FX).

Also, it’s important to say that the cover of the CD doesn’t conform to its content. Maybe those guys gave to the cover the toughness that they wanted to give to their sound. Although, with this way they can increase the sold copies, since some unsuspective people who will be taken in after seeing that huge demon and the naked woman on the cover. The disc begins with a good track, the title track “Tormentizer”, which reveals influences from Iron Maiden, Judas Priest etc, but it keeps to its members’ likes and not their efforts. If the whole album was based in the first tracks’ attitude, it would be much better. Thereafter the album just gets worse! Most of the tracks contain squeaky riffs, which turn the songs to a total acoustic chaos! Also, songs such as “Let’s Get Extreme” and “Stalker”, which reveal their heavier side, tend to lead to an acoustic suicide and believe me, I heard the record many times with a lot of patience and complaisance!

If Torment understood what they want to play, they would us understand this too!