Torchia – They Are Born Under Rules of the Darkness
Release Date: 8th May 2026
Label: Rockshot Records
Bandcamp
Genre: Melodic Death Metal, Gothic Industrial Metal.
FFO: Kalmah, TerraDown, AmongRuins, Thy Kingdom Will Burn.
Review By: Malte Brigge
Finland’s Torchia hit my radar with 2024’s Arcane Magicae, an aggressive, thrash-infused burst of melodic death metal that was a little charred around the edges and whose lead-off track, “There’s a Witch Among Us”, became a favorite, maintaining extreme cred while giving me something to sing chant bark along to. A trip through their back catalogue (2017’s Of Curses and Grief and 2020s The Coven) revealed a band borrowing from anything and everything in pursuit of a more aggressive sound. Their application of twin-guitar harmonies, wictorious power metal climbs and thick, industrial phrasing lends them a unique edge and individual voice. They’re a band on the march, each album showing new evolutions of their sound.
With their fourth full-length, They Are Born Under Rules of the Darkness, Torchia pushes the more brutal elements of their sound to the fore. Rapid, chuggy, rhythmic pounding that was previously just an element (notably “Lord of Dreams” from Coven) has become the featured attraction. Nekromanteion introduces hard running riffs and axe-chop vocals that dominate the full 38 minutes of the album. Drums explode on wild fills and settle into machine-like, nearly robotic, grooves; the guitars slide between concrete djent machinations, singing melodic leads and slippery, thrashy solos; a variety of other instruments and sounds (violins, O-shaped choirs, throat singing, horns, submarine sonar pings, etc.) surprise their way into the mix. TABURofT sets a darker mood than previous albums, melding orchestration, great guitar solos, harmonies, uplifting power metal shifts and brutal drops into a theatrical vista of hell.
Villemort and Henri von Hardy play their guitars at once with cutting technicality and wild abandon. Twining leads and percussive riffs fill every square centimeter and fly at speeds that make you wonder how anyone is keeping up with anyone else. Braided melodies on standouts Die Amour and Sanguine Masquerade get stuck in your head like the best of power metal moments while distorted riffs on Hellstorm and Stygian Waters deploy unusual scales for exotic adjacency. Wild solos on Into Hell, Hellstorm, and Die Amour burst like a beast from a bilious belly, vicious and stranglingly beautiful. Nox’s swampy chopvox are miasmic, choked, and layered with blackened shrieks, raspy cleans and tunneled growls. Gang vocals (Stygian Waters), call-and-response choruses (Sanguine Masquerade) and an aggressive, rhythmic delivery upbraid you with paeans of pain and torture. Vincent Oscar Mills’ omnipresent drumming flips between inflammatory fills, devil driving grooves and pounding punctuation. Unfortunately, despite the power of the snare, the full kit is flat; what cymbals you can hear are waxy and, despite how much work Mills does, you don’t really notice much of it.
I was surprised to see Dan “The Man” Swanö listed on Metallum as the album’s masterer. TABURotD is incredibly busy and very fast, but much songwriting strength is lost in the incredibly thick, very loud mix (Janne Saksa, who also mixed Arcane Magicae, which also has a muddy production). It took me half a dozen listens to recognize how good some of the songs are, which is really a pity. Previous albums let Torchia‘s writing breathe and feel fleshy. TABURotD is hard to listen to and becomes indistinct after a few songs. It feels like a 19th-century factory that has become autonomous, pounding its product through a sepia smog with nary a human in sight. The songwriting could use some space, too, though this has never been Torchia’s style. There are a couple of very short breaks on a few songs but nothing stops for very long. Everyone’s in such a hurry to get their say in that you can’t harness any of the many layers, which the production ensures all happen on the same flat plane.
For a while, I found this album disappointing, almost exclusively due to the jackhammer layering and wearying relentlessness. I do think these elements will make it a one-and-done for a lot of listeners. But part of what I like about reviewing is getting to know an album intimately. After a few listens, I would wake with the orchestral melodies from Die Amour or sliding guitar harmonies of Sanguine Masquerade in my head, making me want to listen again, and I became more enthralled by the technical brutality and furious relentlessness of They Are Born Under Rules of the Darkness. I would love for the composition and production to breathe, but this album eventually caught my attention, and I’ll keep my ears on Torchia for whatever darkness comes next.
(3 / 5)
