A recently re-discovered minor classic of avant-garde Teutonic death metal that I haven't been able to stop listening too lately. Atrocity's Todessehnsucht originally came out under the title Longing For Death when it was released in 1992 by Roadrunner Records, and like a lot of foreign death metal albums that came out around this time (after the heyday of underground DM), Atrocity's sophomore album slipped somewhat into obscurity. This recent reissue from Metal Mind dusts off this stunning slab of dissonant, progressive brutality for fans of challenging old-school heaviness, and it still sounds as strange and crushing as it did back upon it's release. Just listen to the lead-off title track; those nauseating atonal leads, the sludgy, slurred riffing, the odd time signatures - it all contributes to the overall strangeness of Atrocity's sound, a convoluted form of death metal flecked with orchestral elements that in some ways echoes the bizarre, uncomfortable sound that Gorguts would develop on Obscura. Other songs like "Unspoken Names" and "Godless Years" meld crushing down tuned heaviness with some truly jarring rhythms and noisy guitars, making the off-time atonal melodies and jagged riffs sound even stranger when contrasted with the faster, more straightforward thrashing, blastbeat-driven violence, and abrupt downshifts into skull-caving doom. It's not as difficult or as abstracted as later Gorguts, though, and Atrocity still anchor their songs in huge, menacing melodic riffs and ghastly atmosphere that maintains a classic DM feel, while Alex Krull's cavernous troll-vocals manage to balance a supremely guttural delivery while still being somewhat intelligible. The rhythm section doles out some crazed time signature fuckery, entering into warped math-metal and jazz-informed playing on "A Prison Called Earth" where moaning choirs are twisted around hyper-angular riffs and stop-on-a-dime rhythmic patterns, and later tracks (like "Sky Turned Red") incorporate a mix of Wagnerian and liturgical music influences (strings, tympani, choral voices) into the surging, spasming death metal.

As usual, Metal Mind gives this re-mastered reissue a quality presentation, adding a cover of Death's "Archangel" at the end, and including a twelve page booklet with liner notes, lyrics and photos, and digipack packaging. Limited to two thousand machine-numbered copies.