Torche
Harmonicraft
The cover art of Torche’s third album tells you all you need to know. It is a metal album, no question, but one that features a number of cute cartoon baby dragons vomiting out rainbows on its sleeve. That pretty much sums it up. Torche has always been an experiment in making metal as if it was bubble-gum pop, and this is by far the band’s most successful attempt in my eyes. The riffs are as head-mulching as anything you’ll get from Mastodon, but the song structures feel more like Green Day (especially the bouncy drumming). The vocals are melodic and the overall feeling is uplifting rather than gloomy. Hardly very metal. Stand out track ‘Kicking’ is entirely representative: you could opt to head bang to it quite happily, but you could also dance along to the jaunty bass-line at a wedding. Ok, maybe not a wedding. But you know what I mean. Every track is good: this feel like a band nailing a formula that they’ve been developing for some while. Harmonicraft is what the first two Torche records promised but never quite delivered. Let’s hope they now develop things further on album number four. The first really excellent album to make my list this year.