Album Review: Ancient Torment – Follow the Echo of Curses

Band: Ancient Torment
Title: Follow the Echo of Curses
Label: Eternal Death
Release date: August 1st 2025
Country: USA
Format reviewed: High quality digital recording

Album Review: Ancient Torment – Follow the Echo of Curses via Eternal Death by Michelle

The reason I picked this one out to review was mainly because of the album cover, as I found the dark and gloomish aspect of it quite eye catching, especially because of the contrast between the light colored logo and the overall eerie feeling this artwork emits. But that is not all, obviously. Despite this band not leaning much into raw black metal, their specific sound oddly reminds me of the one man project Vampirska, which probably a lot of people know by now. I cannot really tell why, though. Perhaps it is the use of synth and perfectly distorted guitar playing similar riffs, because the vocals don’t sound much like so. Either way, Ancient Torment hold their own uniqueness with their production, leaving the listener entertained for the most part. Despite the 6 tracks this record holds, each one is quite lengthy if I do say so myself.

‘Hanging from a Dead Star’ starts off the album with its fast tempo and heavily distorted riffs, accentuating the overall blasphemous portrait Ancient Torment is looking to aim for. The riffs turn somewhat punk-ish not long after the 3rd minute of the song, creating a bouncy yet harsh atmosphere which I personally really enjoyed. This track specifically reminded me of Vampirska because of the weirdly similar sounding riffs, crafting a dark and disheartened ambience for listeners to enjoy.

‘Spectre at the Crossroads’ begins quite calm, the presence of the synth feeling almost out of place before the vocals interrupt what was once a deep serenity. This track puts more accent on the vocals, as the riffs and overall instrumental didn’t really entertained me, to say the least. Despite all this, the song itself holds a powerful harshness which is transmitted through the unbalanced and merciless tunes.

To be completely honest, ‘Sorrow Verses’ caught me completely off-guard with the way it starts. It feels like it leans more into the atmospheric side of black metal, that until the vocals and overall song make their way in. Still, this song managed to entertain me sufficiently with the use of the catchy guitar riffs. While this song seems more lively and energetic, the fourth minute of it changes this aspect with the sudden silence accompanied with the use of synth. The track resumes shortly after just to get paused again, this time with a change in tempo after being restarted.

The fourth track’s title intrigued me quite a bit, ‘Dejected Dreams Molested in Purgatory’ feeling straight out of a horror movie. Still, I couldn’t help but get reminded yet again of the vampiric black metal project, because this does hold as well some long song titles. While again, this one wasn’t much my cup of tea, I still enjoyed the rough ambience and misanthropic image it holds.

‘Under the Guise of Virtue’ start feels quite straightforward, much like most of the previous tracks. Once again, I really liked the riff distorsion and the drum beats combined with the use of synth, all of these aspects generating a rebellious and aggressive backround of Ancient Torment‘s production techniques. The clean vocals from near the song’s end were what I definitely did not expect, though appreciated much.

The album ends with ‘Rotting Temperament’, which starts pretty enjoyable for me with the catchy and bouncy riffs accompanied by the drums. These last 9 minutes of the album make up for the things that didn’t quite match my liking, and so I find this pretty satisfying. While I am not a big fan of long tracks unless they really manage to catch my attention, Ancient Torment really cooked with this one. The second guitar joining in at around the fourth minute sounds just amazing, emphasizing on the somewhat cleaner side of this record. The riffs speed up near the end, almost as if alerting the listener about this album’s final moments.

So to make myself more clear, Ancient Torment‘s ‘Follow the Echo of Curses’ introduces some raw black metal aspects while still maintaining a ‘regular’ sound, creating quite the pleasant ambience most BM fans would enjoy. To me, this is a 9/10.

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9/10 Epic Storm
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