It's not easy for a young band, especially in the realms of death metal, to land on the market with an original and revolutionary sound. Torchbearer hailing from Sweden are a fine example. Although their mixture of thrash-death-black metal is quite good, you can't help finding here and there influences from established bands. Here a little Morbid Angel, there a little Emperor, here again touches of Hypocrisy and Deicide and there finally a little Dissection. I bet anyone might find different influences in their music and even the band might not agree with me, especially when you know that the band features members of Satariel, Unmoored, Incapacity and Setherial.

Anyway, Torchbearer's Yersina Pestis is a good debut. Their death metal isn't the finest, but it's above average though. At least, it had my wife yelling at me for listening to that "noise" too loud in front of my four month old daughter, which is for the common extreme metal listener a good point. The razor-sharp riffs are accurate, so are the few lead guitar parts, the cookie monster screaming guy is fine, but the drums don't have a good impact on me. This is probably due to the mix because the guy behind the drum kit seems to know his job, because of my feet drumming in front of my computer. Torchbearer's Yersinia Pestis is a raw mixture of death and thrash metal, enhanced with cold elements of black metal. The majority of the songs remain however more or less of the same acabit and sound repetitive, although some of the tracks have that little extra something such as Bearer Of The Torch or Pest Cometh.

I wouldn't like to be myself a new comer onto the metal scene, especially the black-death metal scene as bands have been around for about 15 years and probably everything has been done before. Torchbearer will not make a big impact onto it, but for all those who are true to the scene, I bet they might want to check it out. As for myself, with the tons of other material I have to check out, I might not listen to them again until they release their next effort.