Tourniquet Microscopic View Of A Telescopic Realm CD

With Microscopic View of a Telescopic Realm, Tourniquet attempt to bring their message to a wider, more secular audience, in addition to their devoted following among fans of Christian heavy metal. Luckily, the band members are inventive enough musicians to make the record worth a listen even for the unconverted; although their primary focus is on melodic, neo-classical metal, there are also ample doses of more complicated progressive metal, as well as chaotic thrash riffing. ~ Steve Huey

Unbelievable, simply unbelievable. There’s probably no way to create a metal album more extreme: on one hand you’ll find soft acoustic guitar and organ parts, on the other incomprehensible fast grind sections, in between those poles they celebrate nearly everything heavy metal generated during history: Simple mid-tempo parts, leads for two in the style of Maiden, galloping thrash guitars, doomy seventies-axes or groovy modern riffs. You could go on for hours. Musically this band climbs the highest peaks where the atmosphere becomes thin. Though the team performance is equal, one has to emphasize the drumming of mastermind Ted Kirkpatrick. The breaks this man fires out of his feet and hands would drive a good amount of established drummers completely mad. The call and response singing of Luke’s melancholy rough voice and axeman Aaron, who sometimes reminds one a bit of Tom Araya, fit perfect to this extreme mixture. By the way, the hard job of creating the right sound for this piece of art was mastered by Bill Metoyer in an absolutely satisfying way by providing them with an awesome dry berserk sound. Ok, this disk isn’t metal easy listening because the songs are far too complex. Tourniquet puts more riffs into one song than other bands use during their whole career and through loads of uncommon beats make it hard to snap your fingers constantly during the piece, yet the compositions are never distracting, rather walking successfully the fine line between genius and madness. As mentioned at the beginning: Unbelievable, simply unbelievable. Metal Hammer - March 2000

Personnel: Ted Kirkpatrick (guitar, drums).

Tourniquet: Aaron Guerra (vocals, guitar, bass); Luke Easter (vocals); Ted Kirkpatrick (bass, drums).

Additional personnel: Steve Rowe (vocals); Cameron Stone (cello); Jennifer Hall (flute).