Some bands get lucky, other bands have to work hard and pay their dues. Turbid North, having dominated their local scene, were advised by Drowning Pool to relocate to an area with a bigger scene in order to make it. They worked full time as lumberjacks in a place called North Pole in Alaska in order to save up enough money to move to Texas. As far as I’m concerned, that’s their dues paid.

Describing themselves as “Mountain Metal”, they play fast, aggressive and often technical songs interspersed with digressive solos and overlaid with distorted duel vocals — one a typical death style growl, the other a Cradle Of Filth-esque shriek. Inspired by their frigid surroundings and the tale of a hunter trapped in the wilderness, both the album and the band’s own story parallels the hunter’s fight for survival, kept going by a will of stone. The result is a complete, all-or-nothing approach — no compromise, no surrender offered as they blast cold-as-death Alaskan fury.

Orogeny is a pretty good example of how to engineer a collision of doom, thrash and death/black metal and tracks sometimes veer between genres for interesting effect. “Stormblast”, for example, slows things down a bit with an unusual waltz-like three beat section to throw you off when you thought you’d got a handle on things, differentiating itself from previous scorchers like rabid opener “Wolves” and “Rift”, which smacks of Mastodon in its construction, but then we’re back to a full-frontal aural assault with no regard for survivors in “Between The Glacier And The Sea”.

The title track “Orogeny” is the band at their frenetic, breakneck best. Drummer Rev. Adam North must have legs like an ogre to play the bass pedals at this blistering pace for so long, with the blurred hands of Nick “Savage” Forkel and Alex “Power” Rydlinksi providing even more pace alongside viscera-churning chord progressions. Later into the track things slow down, becoming more thoughtful. The chords mellow into a dark backdrop, with wandering guitars seeming to muse on what has gone before.

This leads us perfectly into the d’enouement of “Floating the Ionosphere” which feels almost ironically like the first sharp intake of air after tunneling out from under an avalanche of aggression and ferocity, with long pondering distorted notes reaching into acoustic sections. Catching our breath, at about five minutes into the track, there’s another change of pace as we drag ourselves up and begin the long but hopeful journey back home. The trials are not over yet however, as at twelve and a half minutes and almost fully instrumental, this is by far the longest track on the album and although there are plenty of changes to keep you interested, sometimes it feels like it’s just about to end when another theme rears up, forcing you to keep your wits about you. Truth be told it’s a little self indulgent and overblown, but rounds out the album in a very definite “it’s finished” kind of way.

The album is generally well put together but I think the vocals are what will make people love it or hate it. Sometimes the post-production work on the vocals can be heard a little too much for my liking, although it’s nothing most bands don’t do — a little echo here, a touch of reverb there — and there are no “clean” vocals to speak of, which again, some people will love and others might be put off by. That would be a shame as the self-proclaimed masters of mountain metal stand tall against the desolate backdrop of tundra that spawned them and are well worth a listen.

3.5/5