Pale World - Torsion (V50)

It’s an honour to welcome Pale World back on Venalism with ‘Torsion’, one of his most foreboding, immersive and thunderously gloomy releases yet.

The grinding, numbing abrasion of previous PW releases is still very much present, the sheer mass of noise, when it hits, will be felt in your bones, but alongside that is a more prevalent foregrounding of restraint, a more thorough exploration into the dank, pitiless atmospherics heretofore used more sparsely.

Don’t think for a second that these more restrained sequences are equal to any sense of reprieve though; the sub-tonal clanks and rumbling washes on ‘Slum’ provoke a suffocating, anxiety-inducing effect; the hollow, muggy ambience on the second half of ‘Torsion I’ evoke a crepuscular catacomb. These are not the expansive and delicately haunting textures often expected with darker ambient works, this is much more visceral and it elicits an acute sense of suffocation, entrapment and implacable resignation to whatever grim fate awaits.

Pale World has rarely sounded more doleful and weighed down with its own caustic malaise than on ’Torsion’. It’s a release that, after its 55 minute runtime, will leave the listener riven and enervated in the most perfectly gruesome way.

More Pale World here

Released January 15th 2026. Venalism V50