When Grant Chapman began writing Torture Methods, the NYC-based songwriter and percussionist had a pretty clear idea of the style he wanted to create on record. “I wanted to stuff Darkthrone, Burial, and Boy Harsher in a blender and see what came out the other side,” he explains. The entirely sample-based project—his debut under the Torture Methods moniker—nails this aesthetic perfectly, blending sludgy, melted metal with NIN-inspired industrial blasts and the sort of breakbeat-adjacent dance rhythms that have made Burial a defining voice of UK electronic music.
Chapman, who also serves as the drummer for Chris Taylor’s Body Meat project, self-released Torture Methods on May 15. For the project, he contextualized his unique upbringing, from being homeschooled in an evangelical household to discovering punk music after being sent away to boarding school. Chapman explains that he eventually made his way to the computer-based music he makes now “by hanging around bands like Palm and Spirit of the Beehive,” which certainly shows in the end product.
Check out the story behind the songs that encompass Torture Method and stream along to the LP below.
1. “Mortis”
For most of this album, I was writing some pretty challenging and angular beats—likely from drilling Body Meat songs into my skull for well over a year. I wanted to craft something more digestible, something in a four-on-the-floor, Boy Harsher–esque fashion that unified an audience rather than divide and confuse them. This track came together in a mere couple of days and I decided to open the record with it. It blends every element of my sound into a neat and orderly package for the listener to get a feel for what’s to come from the rest of the LP.
2. “Wound Culture”
When I toured through Europe, playing an assortment of electronic music festivals, I found myself in various amphitheaters where obscure artists would punish the audience with absurdly immense sonic waves—so immense and pulverizing that my rib cage would rattle and it felt hard to breathe. I wondered if others around me felt it like I did. The feeling of total audible chastisement stuck with and obsessed me. I needed to write a song that encapsulated that feeling.
3. “Embers of Dying Light”
This started off as a challenge my girlfriend gave me: “Write a song to shake ass to,” she said. I took this on hesitantly due to a prevalent redundancy of trap music plaguing contemporary culture. After all was said and done, this one has become a personal favorite that really gets a room moving.
4. “Crawl Space”
With “Crawl Space,” I wanted to evoke the feeling of taking too much acid with a bunch of jazz dorks being consumed by a derelict couch watching YouTube videos of Keith Jarrett off a partially shattered laptop screen in my dank and moldy house back in Olympia, Washington. I needed the whole song to feel unsettled and wonky, as if it was about to lose its balance and fall down a twisted flight of stairs.
5. “Dark Angel”
At the time of writing “Dark Angel,” I was watching a lot of ghost videos and exorcisms. Wanting to see if I could capture the feeling of a person switching back and forth between being possessed and not, I began incorporating the likes of Pissgrave, Hell, Abruptum, Mortiferum, Darkthrone, and Disembowelment (to name a few) with my brand of experimental music to see if it worked at all. I was happy with the results that came out the other side, but you be the judge.
6. “Grave Robber”
An ode to the musical knowledge I absorbed while living in Philadelphia for a couple years with all of the no-wave/indie/polyrhythmic weirdos that I met there, (Body Meat, Kassie Krut/Palm, Spirit of the Beehive, Ada Babar, etc.). This one goes in 60 different directions and doesn’t let up until it’s over. I’ll never forget listening to it for the first time with Steve Vealey, my engineer, in his basement. When it ended, there was a pause, he turned to me and went “Gonna melt a few faces with that one.” I couldn’t have agreed more.
7. “Her Pale Visage”
It’s a haunted ballad written for my mesmerizing and gorgeous girlfriend. It's about the beautiful and sometimes harrowing journey of falling in love and wanting to be there for someone unconditionally. Everyone I’ve shown it to says it’s their favorite from this record, but who doesn’t have a soft spot for a mushy, heartfelt love song?
8. “Posthumous Desire”
I was unsure how to end this album. I was leaning toward using a six-to-seven-minute-long magnum opus of chaos that I had mashed together. But driving along the PCH from the mountains back to Los Angeles, listening to a seemingly endless playlist of darkwave while the sun shed a plethora of vivid colors across the Pacific Ocean, the track “Gopnik” by Mareux came on. Something clicked. It all had to go out with a bang by writing an extremely murky, gothic dance anthem with a menacing dungeon synth line to tie the record all together. Out came “Posthumous Desire,” thus ending the first Torture Methods album.
