Torche
Meanderthal
Hydra Head
Torche ringleader Steve Brooks has lit up the year's most exciting sludge-pop adventure
Steve Brooks has been telling everyone that Torche aren’t a metal band for years, but the dude demonstrated such a talent for erecting monuments to the Melvins back catalogue on the group’s self-titled debut and last year’s equally short-but-sweet In Return EP that we all thought he was a little, you know, cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs. If Torche ever got around to writing a full album of sludge and doom, it’d be a colossus. But as the old adage goes, you write what you know, and Brooks’ greatest asset as a songwriter is his encyclopedic knowledge of pop music.
For those of you who prefer the mental image of Torche joining the funeral procession as pallbearers, there are enough controlled bursts of chaos (the angular attack of “Triumph of Venus”) on Meanderthal to suggest that these four guys remain committed to writing soundtracks for dope, guns and fucking in the streets. But if you’re more inclined to jam Torche’s alternate-universe singles “Fuck Addict,” “Vampyro” and “Fire” back-to-back-to-back, the pitch-perfect pop songs on Meanderthal find Brooks embracing his inner Robert Pollard/Bob Mould/Stephin Merritt and staging a revolution in 4/4 time.
Forget about Metallica’s entire output after The Black Album, Children of Bodom’s dreadful choice in cover material and hair metal’s myopic descent into pussy balladry; it’s true that pop and metal’s previous romps in the sack have portended the decline of Western Civilization. But Meanderthal is—by definition, intent and Kurt Ballou’s superstar production—unquestionably a pop record, albeit a willfully eccentric and polluted kind of pop music with plenty of room for noise and distortion. The only thing missing here is Brooks introducing the record by shouting, “This next song is the first song on our new album!” Seriously, there’s a song (“Healer”) on Meanderthal that sounds exactly like the Foo Fighters, except it isn’t cloying and it actually kicks ass.
Meanderthal is also the group’s definitive statement by default, since Brooks gathered some of the remnants of his previous band Floor and massaged them into Torche’s self-titled debut, and then emptied the fridge with outtakes from those sessions on In Return. Pitting Torche toe-to-toe with Rihanna may be reaching (people are still grousing about the time Decibel’s resident genius/heathen Kory Grow dropped Missy Elliott’s name in a Nachtmystium review), but even at its most skittering, math-y moments (“Little Champion”), Meanderthal has a rhythm made to shake rumps. Shame on me, shame on us, we won’t get fooled again. Maybe it’s time to start booking the arena tour. Hello, Cleveland! —Nick Green
