★★★★★
Torche keep banging out the hits. Though Harmonicraft is well over a year old now, the fuzz-pop-metal titans have kept busy with a rigorous touring schedule and a pair of new 7-inches. Keep Up b/w Leather Feather, an entry in the Volcom Entertainment Vinyl Club, follows up the excellent Harmonslaught with two more crushing tunes that continue to display the band's comfort and consistent stride within a genre that they've essentially perfected over the past half-decade...
- www.punknews.org
2013-07-26
★★★★★
Torche's 2012 full-length Harmonicraft made a slew of year-end lists-including a few on this very site-and with good reason. Harmonicraft satisfied the need of every Torche fan that might love the band for different reasons, whether it's their pulverizing heaviness, their calculated catchiness or a combination of the two (NOTE: It's usually a combination). At the end of the year, one thing we could all agree on was that we should be listening to more Torche.
Hark! Here is more Torche...
- www.punknews.org
2013-01-10
★★★★★
Summary: Torche expand their musical horizons crafting an album that's a real treat within the realm of stoner rock. 22 of 22 thought this review was well written It's particularly striking how effective Torche have been when it comes to carving their own niche within the realm of stoner rock. Once exploring the bludgeoning sludge genre, Miami-based outfit transformed their style quite significantly on their previous full-length album Meanderthal...
- www.sputnikmusic.com
2012-06-14
★★★★★
How many rock acts can you genuinely say started to sound better once they cleaned up their act and got a little slicker? If you've even bothered with this exercise then you're probably staring furrow-browed at six, maybe seven grubby fingers, but with Harmonicraft you can now add Florida's to that paltry bunch of misfits...
- www.bbc.co.uk
2013-04-23
★★★★★
Harmonicraft's cover is awash with illustrations of mythical creatures vomiting rainbows. On a purely aesthetic level it is kitsch and ridiculous... and indeed, a preliminary listen might indicate that the contents correlate to the cover. Massive Brian May style guitar solos, that QOTSA/Foo Fighters brand of heavy-handed stadium rock drumming, the rousing melodic vocals. How do they have the audacity to be so unrepentantly camp and grandiose? But wait... isn't audacity actually a good thing...
- thequietus.com
2012-05-03
★★★★★
Torche have had lineup and label changes but they continue their unorthodox hard rock on Harmonicraft. 13 songs with a total running time of 39 minutes doesn't seem excessive but these short songs pack a wallop with layers of drums, chunky guitars and electric flights of fancy that seem to go for extended period. The songs can go from easily anthemic to weighted down sludge pretty quickly as styles can flip measure to measure...
- www.glidemagazine.com
2012-04-30
★★★★★
Unlike anything else you'll hear in metal's sludge subgenre, Torche songs are unabashedly merry--and mercifully succinct. Forget headtrips: With the Miami foursome, it's all about immediacy over introspection and boogying over brooding. Fans will forgive them for taking four years to craft their third stab of slabs, given its potency. Cheers to Torche for proving a heavy-rock band can be optimistic and sincere--without sacrificing any of the edge.
- filtermagazine.com
2012-04-30
★★★★★
Harmonicraft, the third full-length from Torche, is less interesting as an album than it is as an augur of some vague, underdefined cultural shift. Which isn't to say that it doesn't satisfy on a purely musical level; quite the contrary: Harmonicraft is a short, sweet collection of pop-metal confectionery, irresistible if not unforgettable. Torche's particular sound is rooted in sludge and doom sub-genres, but their chords move upward, skyward, on a grand scale...
- www.tinymixtapes.com
2012-04-30
★★★★★
It's about damn time. Not just for a new Torche album--though it has been a solid four years--but for an album like this: a muscular barrage of ear-filling power riffs and dogged rhythm that sounds uplifting without being masked in grandiose pretension. Where so many of their contemporaries thrash or jitter as a way to mask their lack of any real force, these Floridian sludgers know the inherent joy in noisy creation, and choose to relay it with sheer strength instead of bile or melodrama...
- www.popmatters.com
2012-04-26
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