Territory - The Curse

Territory

The Curse

by V. Srikar at 13 May 2014, 9:56 PM

While the only knowledge I have of Uruguay is of some football heroes, I was quite surprised to find that there exists such talented bands as TERRITORY. Formed in 2008, ‘The Curse’ is their 2^nd full length album and it clearly shows maturity all throughout the album.

The album goes full throttle right from the 1^st song “First Blood” and I’m impressed from the beginning as TERRITORY blasts some heavy Thrash with thick riffs by Marth and the Ozzy style screaming vocals by Jason really working wonders for the band, of course the vocals here are much louder and nastier than that of Ozzy’s. It’s the heavy bass of Doddy combined with the heavy distortion filled guitars and fast paced blast beats that makes ‘The Curse’ such an intimidating album. Each and every song comes at you like a fast paced train crushing you in pieces with every song. The free flowing form of the music is highly commendable and elevates the album to whole new level. While there are moments of mid tempo groovy riffs like in the brilliantly composed “1984”, the album usually moves along high tempo riffs. The occasional solos only impressed me on multiple listening and took some time for me to appreciate. “Sacred Field” depends largely on tempo shifts to bring in the variety and the groovy riffs. “Low Tension” pleasantly surprised me with its crying vocals and thick mid tempo riffs and treading more on the lines of Hard Rock and I have to confess I have never heard such raw sounding amazing song in a long time and this has to be the most impressive song of the album. The album ends with a fast paced “TTY”, another impressive song to finish of an excellent album, where after 3:30 min the music completely stops and after a long pause (at this point I thought the song was over along with the album) at 4:09 the listener is introduced to some atmospheric drone with soothing piano work for the next 2 minutes. I’m not sure if that last atmospheric part was really necessary, but as a whole this is great Thrash album, and the only critic I have with this is the Rhythm guitars are sometimes wrongly placed, but otherwise worth your 31 minutes.

The band is reminiscent of many legends of the Thrash genre, but has enough pedigree to make a niche for itself. Since their debut album “Killer Instinct”, the band has come a long way and I expect “The Curse” to make people stand up and take notice of the band and the Uruguay’s metal scene in general. The album’s production is kept slightly raw and works just fine and I expect more albums in regular frequency by these talented Thrashers.