Biography
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Years Active
2007 – present (17 years)
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Members
- Jörgen Sandström (2007 – present)
The rise of torture:
The band was formed in Sweden, 2007 by Lord K Philipson (The Project Hate MCMXCIX) and Tobias Gustafsson (Vomitory) after they terminated their former band God Among Insects. To complete the line up they asked Jörgen Sandström (ex-Grave vocalist/bassist) to join the band. Immediately Torture Division started to write songs, fired up a website and did what they could to make their cause known.
A few rules were set up from the start:
1. The band was to be a three piece. An army of three.
2. At least 3 demos should be released before they even considered a record deal. The reason for that is that they wanted some time for the band to develop instead of writing a half-assed album. To this day, numerous record deals have been turned down in favour of recording demos and give away the music for free. To actually give away the music is one of the strongest agendas of Torture Division.
3. There is no riff good enough to not contain a blastbeat.
The recordings:
With those rules put in effect the band recorded their 1st demo “With endless wrath” (24.361 downloads to this date) from December 2007 to January 2008 over a few days. The 2nd demo “We bring upon thee” (26.793 downloads to this date) made it into 1’s and 0’s in April/May 2008 and the 3rd demo “Our infernal torture” (28.735 downloads to this date) was put down in November/December, 2008. They also recorded a 7” Christmas single called “Suffer the shitmass” (33.298 downloads to this date), released in 4 copies only by a Japanese super fan! That’s a total of over 113.000 downloads from the official Torture Division site, not counting all the other sites the demos are available at that Torture Division have no statistics for. Not half-assed for a band who says no to record deals and only release demos. Since recording number 2 and forward Torture Division’s been working together with metal god Dan Swanö to make sure their music comes out with the best productions possible.
The agenda:
The band decided not to charge fans any money for the songs, all recordings have been put up for free download on www.torturedivision.net. And as the band didn’t wanna sign a record deal they urged their fans to print their own copies to sell at concerts etc and make themselves some cash to buy a beer or 2 for. Their supporters did an amazing job to spread the name and the band rapidly got more and more downloads from their site. The most loyal fans supported the band by buying their t-shirts so the band could continue releasing their high quality death metal for free. The first demo trilogy together with the 7” also got printed in 1000 copies by American underground label Abyss Records and is entitled “With endless wrath we bring upon thee our infernal torture”, naturally. The band made it clear to the label that they have no rights to the songs and or/if someone else wanna print the same thing they are more than welcome to do so. Torture Division are the only ones with rights to their music.
The live carnage:
The band also landed a few good festival gigs in Sweden after the first couple of demos; Metaltown in Gothenburg, The Close Up Boat between Stockholm-Helsinki, House of Metal in Umeå, etc… And the response was awesome, giving the band a reputation of being a completely killing unit on stage. TD is always ready to enter the stage anywhere under the right circumstances and all questions about this should be made to the e-mail address below.
The future:
Torture Division have now started to record their second trilogy of demos. Shirts and hoodies are on their way to be printed to help finance the recordings so the main focus of the band – to release every bit of music for free – can be maintained. The 2nd trilogy of demos will be entitled “Evighetens Dårar”. For one of the songs on the first demo of this second trilogy (do you follow?) Torture Division invited their fans to be a part of history. The band urged their fans to send in a recording of them screaming the word ”HAIL!”, ending up with a few hundred contributions, each and every one of them making it into the song. That’s Torture Division’s way of saying “thank you” to the fans supporting what they do, which is being the world’s best death metal band. All of Torture Division’s music is available for free, and will always be that, at www.torturedivision.net, complete with covers and lyrics. The brand new demo is just uploaded so go there and experience the latest offering.
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