Snuffed Freaks and Decomposed Cadavers: The Legend of Torsofuck

WARNING: The following post is NSFW as fuck. If you’re easily offended, it might be better if you sit this one out.

Sometime in the year 1995, the great country of Finland gave anal birth to one of the greatest/shittiest bands ever to walk (stalk?) the Earth. That band was Torsofuck. An absolutely repellent combination of the most offensive, knuckle-dragging aspects of slamming brutal death metal and goregrind, the band blazed a path of musical and lyrical deviance off and on for nearly a decade-and-a-half before finally, mercifully calling it a day for good back in 2009, not counting a posthumous limited live cassette release that was only purchased by pale-skinned basement dwellers that own all four pressings of Gut’s Odour of Torture and can’t wait to tell you all about it.

But what did Torsofuck leave us with after almost fifteen years in the game? Actually, not much. A demo, two splits and a full-length is all they could muster in that length of time, but let’s face it, it can’t be easy concocting music this boneheaded/brilliant. I mean, that shit has to take effort.

Anyway, after releasing the High Level of Cannibalistic Violence demo that no one actually heard and a split with Vomitorial Corpulence that was actually heard by no one, Torsofuck finally made it big in 2002 with the Disgusting Gore and Pathology/Polymorphisms to Severe Sepsis and Trauma (that’s not a goddamn mouthful, nope, not at all), a split with the legendary Brazilian goregrinders Lymphatic Phlegm on Bizarre Leprous Productions. For those that aren’t familiar, Bizarre Leprous is like the Nuclear Blast of goregrind labels, so the world at large would finally get a chance to experience the genius of vocalist/guitarist/bassist Mikko Friberg and guitarist/drum programmer Jarkko Haapala in all it’s fucked up, repugnant glory.

Indeed, Torsofuck made the most of the of opportunity and wasted no time in taking a big steaming dump in listeners’ earholes on Disgusting Gore…, kicking things off with the utterly putrid “Fistfucking Her Decomposed Cadaver,” a song dominated by drums that sound like a pissed-off secretary in the 1950’s pounding the ever-living shit out of a typewriter and some of the most toilety toilet vocals you’re probably ever going to hear. Yes, the guitars are in there playing third fiddle to the drums and vox, mostly playing riffs that I’d refer to as “caveman riffs,” but that would be an insult to cavemen and they aren’t here to defend themselves, so that hardly seems fair. Well, except for Caveman Cult, but I don’t think those guys are even real cavemen! Talk about false advertising…

What were we talking about? Oh yeah, that’s right, the rest of Torsofuck’s side of the split goes on for three more tracks in much the same vein as “Fistfucking Her Decomposed Cadaver,” although “Craving for a Fresh Shit” does feature what might be the most inept lead guitar work in human history during it’s final stretch and “Cannibal” (a very out of character tame song title) does add some vocals that sound like a pig rooting around in its own feces to go along with the aforementioned toilet vocals, because clearly Torsofuck were all about thoughtful, nuanced songwriting.

Of course, the split with Lymphatic Phlegm was merely a rancid taste of what was to come. In 2004 Torsofuck would release their magnum opus, the shit-splattered plat du jour known as Erotic Diarrhea Fantasy. In the two years since Disgusting Pathology… the duo somehow managed to get heavier, uglier, dumber and even more disgusting, shitting out one of the sickest, most sexually depraved metal albums of all time.

“Mutilated for Sexual Purposes” begins with a porn sample that’s almost as long as the song itself before the brain-mangling morass of brutal slamming goregrind comes surging forward, covering everything in its path with buckets of blood, guts, piss and other fluids best left unmentioned. The production isn’t exactly better than that of the Lymphatic Phlegm split, but it is louder and gnarlier, with the guitars more prominent in the mix and bathed in distortion that’s so thick ‘n’ chunky you could stand a fork up in it. The kick drum still sounds pretty typewritery, but it’s pushed back in the mix this time around, making it far less irritating.

While Erotic Diarrhea Fantasy certainly benefitted from the heavier production scheme, Friberg and Haapala’s (d)evolution as both players and songwriters also played a huge part in the album’s success. Torsofuck had reached their final form here, striking a perfect, perverse balance between the lizard-brain tickling violence of brutal slamming death metal and the sewage-gurgling sickness of goregrind. I mean, this shit is right up there with Citizen Kane, Moby Dick and the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel in terms of artistic achievement.

Torsofuck also perfected their lyrical prowess on Erotic Diarrhea Fantasy, as evidenced by what is surely one of the greatest songs in the history of recorded music, “Raped By Elephants.” The track begins with a sample from Freddy Got Fingered (the scene where Tom Green’s character jerks off an elephant, naturally) before spewing memorable gems such as;

I sucked like a whore while I was assfucked by elephant trunk

After all it wasnt too bad at all

It took only about ten minutes and cock in my mouth started to cum

Extremely huge load of elephant sperm filled my throat and

Spurted all over my face

I was completely fucked up, but elephants had one more thing to do

All three of them huffed and puffed shits on me

Then they left me alone with my ripped asshole

I’ll never go to Africa again

Erotic Diarrhea Fantasy was Torsofuck’s final studio output and how could it not be? There’s simply no way in hell they could’ve topped such a masterpiece. In the years since its release, the album has attained something of a cult following among those that crave the the lewdest and most degenerate sounds known to man and has been reissued several times on various formats by well known underground labels such as American Line Productions, Morbid Generation Records and Gore House Productions.

At the end of the day, it’s difficult to say how or why Torsofuck were motivated to make such morally corrupt metal magic; I could only find two interviews with the band online and one appears to be in German while the other reads like two malfunctioning Twitter bots attempting to carry on a conversation, so god only knows what was going through their heads when they decided to write songs about elephant rape and anal sex with corpses. But make magic they did, proving beyond a shadow of a doubt that the metal scene is pretty much the worst goddamn thing to ever happen to human civilization.

Exhumed – All Guts, No Glory (Relapse, 2011)

I remember almost exactly when my preoccupation with gore started.  I can’t remember how old I was (I do know I was quite young), but I definitely remember the circumstances.  I was over at my next door neighbor’s house and they just so happened to have a VHS of George A. Romero’s Night of the Living Dead.  We must have watched that movie a thousand times.  We were completely obsessed with it.  I remember running around outside yelling “They’re coming to get you, Barbara!”.  I also remember going to the local graveyard and being disappointed to not see even a single flesh-eating ghoul lumbering around.

As I got older, the obsession continued and intensified, ultimately leading me to much more repulsive films, comic books and finally to death metal.  As I’ve previously documented, I didn’t care for death metal when I first heard it.  But then one day, something clicked.  I realized that death metal was the musical equivalent of the all the horror movies and comics I’d freaked out over in my youth, and after that there was no turning back.

Why am I bringing this up?  Because no death metal band today exudes those putrid ethos that remind me of the fun of my gore-drenched upbringing more than Exhumed.  After a self-imposed eight year silence between full lengths (six if you count the all-covers Garbage Daze Re-Regurgitated) the band is back with All Guts, No Glory, a viciously executed slab of sickness that finds the California quartet doing what they do best; gore, gore and more gore. By backing off the musical and conceptual complexity of 2003’s Anatomy is Destiny in favor of a more refined and catchy approach, they have crafted what is easily their finest album to date.

Of course, a host of bands with more disgusting cover art and more offensive album/song titles have sprung up in Exhumed’s absence, but there is one very important thing separating them from the average Sevared Records band (for instance), and quite frankly, that thing is talent.  Exhumed knows how to write brutal yet classy songs that will stick in your head like a surgical saw to the cerebral cortex, the metallic equivalent of a Romero or Fulci film, making the competition look like the direct-to-DVD hacks of death metal.

Taking elements of death metal, grindcore and thrash and tossing them in a vat of musical quicklime, Exhumed goes straight for the jugular with cuts like “As Hammer to Anvil” “Through Cadaver Eyes” and “Necrotized”.  It’s frightfully awesome stuff, steeped in pitch-black black humor and backed up with some serious chops.  Speaking of chops, the guitar-work of Matt Harvey and Wes Caley (ex-Fatalist, Uphill Battle) is the album’s highlight, a grisly mixture of eviscerating razor-riffage and frenzied soloing that puts the guts in All Guts, No Glory.  Exhumed’s rhythm section are no slouches either and as expected, the playing of bassist Leon del Muerte and drummer Danny Walker (also of Intronaut) is as tight as a canister of 2-4-5 Trioxin, infusing the songs with the necessary speed and precision.

As crushing and brutal as All Guts, No Glory is, there is also an infectious sense of fun that permeates the recording.  It gives me the same feelings I felt watching that first zombie chase Judith O’Dea through the cemetery, that feeling of adrenaline and giddiness and terror all rolled into one.  The zombified band photo gracing the cover is telling; I have a hunch that Exhumed are a group of guys that love this shit as much as I do.  So, if you’re like me and looking for the perfect soundtrack to your gore obsession, look no further, because Exhumed are back from the dead and ready to party.

http://exhumed.bandcamp.com/