Apocalypse Later Music Reviews: thrash metal

Showing posts with label thrash metal. Show all posts

Monday, 23 September 2024

Flotsam and Jetsam - I am the Weapon (2024)

I bought Flotsam and Jetsam's debut album on original release in 1986 but I hadn't moved to their home town of Phoenix by then; I was on the other side of the pond listening in my bedroom in rural Yorkshire. Given that I've been in Phoenix for twenty years now, it's about time I caught them live and I finally did so earlier this year. They were as good as I'd hoped they would be, given that they were touring on the back of two of the best albums of their career, The End of Chaos and Blood in the Water. This is probably the least of the three, but it's still a damn good album worthy of being on my Highly Recommended List for the year. I've played it a lot today and it's as fresh as it was on a first listen.

My primary note is that it's less thrashy than usual, continuing in the vein of Blood on the Water in combining thrash with power metal and good old fashioned heavy metal. Gates of Hell blisters out of the, well, gate, courtesy of some frantic drumming from Ken Mary, but it doesn't show up until seven tracks in and, when it does, it makes us realise a lot of what came before it wasn't remotely as fast. Cold Steel Lights blisters early too, so the band are still willing to get fast, but they tend to slow down a little to bolster the melodies and hooks.

As I pointed out in my review of Blood on the Water, the obvious influences here are to bands like Iron Maiden and Queensrÿche, with occasional nods to bands a generation further back. There's a lot of seventies on Beneath the Shadows, where the bluesy bounce of the riffs reminds of ZZ Top's La Grange and the chorus builds like Deep Purple. Sure, it finds some Pantera guitar moments late but it's a look further back than usual for the Flots. By comparison, Maiden are everywhere here, most effectively on Burned My Bridges and Beneath the Shadows.

Those two are among my highlights this time out, along with Cold Steel Lights and it probably isn't a coincidence that these three have the most successful hooks. The verses are memorably melodic and the choruses are even catchier. They all build emphatically well too, reaching powerful grooves that take them home, usually with impressive use of backing vocals to deepen them further. Back in April, my highlight from their live set was The Walls, from Blood in the Water, even above all the classics I've been wanting to hear live for almost four decades. These unfold in the same vein.

That means that, while I'm an old school speed metal nut and prefer my thrash metal to be as fast as possible, I apparently appreciate the hooks that Eric A.K. hurls out even more and he has plenty of those here. It might seem like a gimme, but he dominates this album. Usually, I'm just as caught up in the guitarwork on Flots albums, but I found myself focusing on the vocals more this time out. And that's even though Michael Gilbert and Steve Conley deliver the goods yet again. They do just as much that's worthy on Cold Steel Lights as Eric A.K. but it's that melodic vocal line that's what I keep following. He channels some Ronnie James Dio on this one and that's no bad thing.

Given that I'm raving about yet another Flots album, I should explain why I think this is a little less than its two predecessors. One reason is that a couple of songs feel a little weaker this time out, a problem that didn't manifest on either The End of Chaos or Blood in the Water. I'm not as fond of Primal or Running Through the Fire. I'm not as sold on the bounciness of Kings of the Underworld either, with Eric A.K. spitting out words rhythmically on the beat, almost like an old school rapper, even if he sings rather than raps.

Another reason is that I kept hearing moments of other songs, which was occasionally distracting. It probably doesn't help that it started on the opener, A New Kind of Hero. Was that a nod to a riff in Anthrax's Madhouse? Was that a vocal progression from Whitesnake's Still of the Night? It's still a powerhouse of a song, exactly the sort of thing that should open a Flots album, and it closes wonderfully too. They always knew how to end songs, which many bonds never quite figure out. But those moments are there every time I repeat. There are similar moments on Primal and the title track that sound eerily familiar, even if I can't place them yet.

With acknowledgement to The Head of the Snake and Black Wings, which continue to grow on me with repeat listens, I'd call this another strong album from the Flots. It's a bit slower than The End of Chaos but just as melodic as Blood in the Water. It's a little less consistent than either, but even the worst songs aren't bad; they're just not up to the admirably high standard they're working to these days. It's an 8/10 release for sure and I'm looking forward to hearing a few of these songs in a live environment. However, I gave Blood in the Water one of my rare 9/10s and I find I can't do that this time.

Tuesday, 10 September 2024

Austral - Tierra del Fuego (2024)

Here's something interesting that opens in highly unusual fashion. The intro, Hain, plays out with throat drone and ethnic drums, as if it's setting us up for a Mongolian metal album. However, the Latin scholars among you will know that "austral" means "southern" and so this band accordingly hail from Chile, where Tierra del Fuego is the archipelago at the very southern tip of that nation and its neighbour to the east, Argentina, curling out into the ocean where South America looks at Antarctica. That's a very different part of the world indeed to Mongolia, even if we factor in that Austral are from the Chilean capital, Santiago, three thousand miles to the north.

However, that intro isn't misleading us. This came to me as thrash metal, but there's lots of groove metal in that sound and there's an ethnic component that simply can't be ignored. The vocals are chanted as often as they're sung and that goes as much for Nicolás Araya's lead vocals as anything in the background behind him. Luis González plays the sort of drumkit you'd expect for a drummer in a metal band, but there's plenty of other percussion going on and that often dominates tracks. That's courtesy of Jorge Saldaña, who's also credited on wind instruments, which are something I would expect on a folk metal album but not usually on a thrash metal equivalent.

And so there's folk drumming and chanting on Temawkel. There's throat singing on Kólyot. Is that an accordion on Kawésqar? Weynwayer opens with what sounds like a didgeridoo, accompanied by bass, acoustic guitar and a throat drone, and, while it's quite a heavy song, it's not metal at all. Volveré kicks off with acoustic guitar and flutes. It does bulk up, as we'd expect, but never turns into thrash metal, with the piano remaining just as prominent as the guitars. Fiu Fiu (Futaleufú) starts out in a waterfall, I think, with more flutes and a singalong, before temporarily turning up the power.

What all this suggested to me is that Austral's primary influence is Sepultura, hardly unexpected for thrashers in South America, but they're still focused on 1996's Roots rather than whatever the band has done in the almost three decades since Max Cavalera left. Even then, Austral took their influence from the folk aspects in Roots but ignored its nu metal flavour. No turntablists show up here, there are no guest appearances from trendy Americans and the result doesn't sound much like Soulfly at all.

That means that the experimentation soars supreme as they combine metal with native sounds. A song like Sigilo can start out like a heavy metal song, but in what sounds like a rainforest, with an array of ambient sounds behind the riffing. It develops with clean vocals, but finds moments that grow in emphasis to harsher voices. Midway, it drops into tribal drumming, acoustic guitar and a fireside singalong. Then it bulks up again into more overt thrash tempos and adds a throaty vocal that plays with drone. Sure, it's a long song for this album, at four and a half minutes, but it's not really a long song and it crams a lot into that running time.

The same, on a broader scale, applies to the album. There are a dozen songs on offer that total about three quarters of an hour, and Austral cram a lot into that running time. This came to me as thrash metal and I have to point out that it's often not thrash metal and sometimes not metal at all. Will that affect its success? Maybe, because labels shape expectations, but it doesn't mean that this is a failure. I found it fascinating. Sure, there's an obvious influence but it's no copy. The least metal songs, like Volveré and Weynwayer, don't sound like anything on Roots.

And, frankly, the songs that follow them, which are Ley sin Dios and Tierra del Fuego respectively, mark clear returns to metal, often thrash metal, and yet still don't sound entirely like Sepultura. I hear them, but I hear a lot of other bands too, even I'm not going to call them out as overt. Would it help if I suggested that, for a while, Weynwayer sounded rather like The Hu covering Bon Jovi? I don't think so. Would it help to throw out Manu Chao as a comparison on Fiu Fiu? Surely not. That isn't what these songs are doing, even if they hint at it at points.

What matters, I think, is that while there's plenty of thrash metal here, I think it would be better for me to call this folk metal. I recommend a lot of thrash albums to my son, who's a big thrash fan. I'm going to recommend this to him too, but because of what it is when it isn't thrash rather than when it is. He's not as experimental in his tastes as I am, but I think he'd like where Dualidad and Kawésqar would take him.

Monday, 3 June 2024

Evildead - Toxic Grace (2024)

I liked United States of Anarchy, Evildead's comeback album in 2020, and actively talked up certain aspects that I'll quote right now: "it's full of unashamedly old school fast and heavy thrash" and "a great mix of technical proficiency, angry attitude and raw speed, just how I like it". The reason I'm bringing that up now is because I can't remotely say the same things about this follow-up, a fourth album overall for the Los Angeles thrashers, and that's highly disappointing.

It takes a little while to realise how disappointing but, the longer the album runs on, the more we can't avoid the conclusion that Evildead have seriously lost their way this time out. I hope they can correct course for their next album, because it shouldn't be a particularly difficult task. They were in fine fettle four years ago. What's changed since then?

Initially, it's not too bad. F.A.F.O. kicks off well, with a capable intro suggesting an imminent ramp up to fast thrash speeds but it never quite gets there. It keeps hinting that it will for quite a while, but we gradually realise that it's content to just chug along while Phil Flores tries to sound angry without the same level of effort he put into the previous album. Reverie starts out fast but calms down and Flores shifts into an almost hip hop vocal approach. He's not rapping per se, but he spits bars here, punctuating their last words, as often as he spits out lyrics.

Neither of these are bad tracks, but neither is what it could be, so we're still hopeful at this point and I remained hopeful even after a chugger like Raising Fresh Hell that's nothing but filler three tracks in with a poor chorus. There's some speed in Stupid on Parade, but only very briefly, even if drummer Rob Alaniz doesn't quite get the memo, and its brevity sparks a sinking feeling that only grows with the album, pausing only temporarily in Subjugated Souls during the first of the album's two real examples of excellent fast thrash that hurls out energy. The second arrives at the end of Fear Porn nine tracks in, with only a cover still to come at that point.

I talk a lot about songs on albums that I merely like on a first listen but appreciate more and more each further time through. These growers tend to sound good but carry depth that comes clearer in repeat listens and often those become my favourite songs on those albums. I have to say Stupid on Parade is the antithesis of that. I didn't like it on a first listen, with its chugging tedium and its manipulated vocals, but repeat listens make me realise just how bad it is. That's not a good thing. Neither is not wanting to listen to it again after three times through.

And so it goes. Subjugated Souls may be the best song on the album, musically speaking, but it's a rather awkward song lyrically. Now, Evildead have never been the best lyricists and even the prior album was hardly impressive from that standpoint, its songs hurling vitriol at all the usual thrash suspects like politics and religion. I can get past that for the most part, but this one feels like it's punching down instead of up, a product of old men bitching about a younger generation. That it's got some fair points to make and it's better lyrically crafted than the previous few songs doesn't make it feel any less cringeworthy.

So there's a delicate and tasty intro to Bathe in Fire? We know that Juan Garcia is a killer guitarist even if he doesn't try particularly hard this time out. The guitar solo on this song is easily its best aspect, because it's another mid-tempo chugger with an even more lazy Flores vocal delivery. He speaks some of these lyrics, chants others and adds more post-production manipulation. This was the point where the sinking feeling stuck. World ov Rats hints at energy with its opening riff and bassline. Fear Porn has that second blistering section that feels great until we realise how little the album has left to go. Poetic Omen does nothing. None of them are highlights, though.

In fact, there are no real highlights. I'd plump for Subjugated Souls musically, but the lyrics don't help its case. That probably leaves F.A.F.O. as the best original song, which it really shouldn't be, and the best song the cover that wraps things up. It's The Death & Resurrection Show, taken from Killing Joke's self-titled 2003 album, and I rather dig it, but it doesn't feel like it belongs anywhere on this album. Evildead covered Planet Claire by the B-52s on United States of Anarchy, so maybe they ought to release an unusual covers album. I'd be up for that.

How things change over such a brief period. Four years ago, I was glad to see Evildead back and I praised their vitriol and vitality. They felt rejuvenated and ready to play a part in the burgeoning thrash scene. Today, I'm finding the best of their new material average and the worst thoroughly disappointing, and thinking about them as a covers band. That's not a good career trajectory.

Friday, 12 April 2024

Crossdown - Wind Blows Over the Forsaken Land (2024)

Country: Vietnam
Style: Black Metal
Rating: 7/10
Release Date: 12 Apr 2024
Sites: Facebook | Metal Archives

I've only reviewed one album from Vietnam at Apocalypse Later and that was back in 2020, so it's about time I covered another one. Oddly, both turn out to be black metal debuts, but otherwise I wouldn't call out a lot of commonality between the two. Elcrost's Benighted & Unrequited covers a lot of musical ground, always playing with contrasts: harsh and clean, intense and ambient, fast and slow. Crossdown don't have any real interest in clean, ambient or slow, though, of course, the songs do vary in tempo, merely from reasonably fast to frantic, with some mosh parts in there for good measure. What they want to do most is blister and they do that for most of nine songs.

According to Metal Archives, there are two musicians in Crossdown, though they also suggest that this album came out on 13th January, 2023. Everything else I'm seeing suggests 12th April, 2024, so I'm reviewing it now, but I guess I need to trust them on who's in the band. Phat Tien Nguyen takes care of the drums and Trung Loki contributes everything else: vocals, guitar and bass. Loki has to be one of the busiest men in Vietnam, partly because he's also in half a dozen other active bands that play various combos of black, death and thrash metal—Brutore, Butchery, Calochivu, Obsess, Rot and Sleeping Hollow—and because he's been half a dozen others in the past, but because he also runs Bloody Chunks Records, who released this album.

He's primarily in black metal mode this time out, as his guitar has a typically vicious black metal edge to it and his vocals form a typical black metal shriek. He barks out these lyrics without a lot of variety, but they do add that higher pitched tone that's needed on this sort of album. His bass rumbles along underneath deepening everything else but without seeking any sort of turn in the spotlight. In fact, there's very little here that wants the spotlight. Every song is more than happy to be there, to blister through its business and then to let the next have its turn.

The overall feel is shifted to the album as a whole, with each song contributing something similar to bolster it. That's why I won't call out any particular tracks for special mention. Go to YouTube or wherever else you look to sample albums. Pick a track. If you like that one, the you're going to like all nine of them. On the other hand, if you don't like it, then this isn't going to be for you and you don't need to listen any further. Maybe I could cite Bizarre Ritual or Immaculate Liar for having a tiny edge over the others, but I'd probably do the same thing with different ones tomorrow.

If there are surprises, they're in Nguyen's drumming and just how many mosh parts add up as the album rolls along. Nguyen's drumming is furious in fast sections and calculated in slower ones. He seems to deliver both styles effortlessly, but he never seems to reach the sort of speeds that the most intense black metal bands thrive on. Maybe it's partly because the mix isn't the cleanest at the lower end, a not uncommon state of affairs for black metal, so the bass drum blurs together with the bass. If there's a double bass pedal here, it's buried deep enough that I had to stretch to imagine it. It may well be just Nguyen having fast feet.

Partly, though it's because Nguyen just doesn't aim for that sort of hyperspeed. And that's where those mosh parts come in. They're right out of thrash when bands slow down and want their pits to churn and, the more I listen to this album, the more I feel like there's a heck of a lot more thrash here than I initially thought. When Crossdown are slow, they fit right in with thrash metal. When they speed up, they feel black but mostly because of the vocals and that guitar tone. They're not a long way from thrash otherwise.

The result is, perhaps inevitably, something that feels black metal from the outset but also highly accessible to thrash fans. Right from the beginning, when Paganist's Revenge blisters out of the gate, it's clearly black metal but there's a short mosh part within its first minute and more on the way later in the song. That repeats across the other eight tracks and I suddenly realised that I was reacting to it in the way I'd react to a thrash album. This is black metal that aims to clean you out rather than paint any sort of picture or push a bleak mood.

That's why I'm going to go with a 7/10 here, even though that matches the Elcrost album and that seems odd. This doesn't sport any of the elegance or subtleties of Elcrost that I was so impressed with back in 2020, but it doesn't try to. It's no nonsense heads down thrash all wrapped up in black metal trimmings and that's all it cares about. It's simply a different thing, even if the genre is the same on the label, and it wants to do something different. I'll happily throw on Elcrost if I want to listen to something impeccably crafted. And I'll happily throw on Crossdown if I just want to shed a lot of latent aggression. Both of those approaches are valid and both bands do the business.

Tuesday, 2 April 2024

Toxic Carnage - Praying for Demise (2024)

I do like my thrash metal and I especially like finding new bands from pivotal nations to the genre who play it and play it well. Toxic Carnage hail from the Mairinque and São Roque on the outskirts of São Paolo in the southeast of the country and, while they've been around since 2008, have only recently got round to actually releasing full length albums. Their debut was the ironically named Doomed from the Beginning in 2019 and this is their follow-up on the other side of COVID. Before these and between them, they put out a lot of singles, EPs and split releases, so it's not that they just sat around doing nothing.

The play a vicious brand of thrash metal that's right out of the old school Slayer playbook, obvious both in the vocals of Robson Dionisio and the lead guitar of Roberlei Cristiano and a few guests providing a lead guitar on individual tracks, the most known of whom is Jhon França of Cerberus Attack, who guests on guitar on Trapped in a Vortex, on vocals on Nuclear Addiction and also found the time to both produce and mix the album.

The band's general approach is to remain speedy, but songs like The Unholy Book and Trapped in a Vortex slow down a little and chug as much as they blister. However, slower is a relative term, with these slower songs still pretty fast compared to other thrash bands. It just means that they tend to reach three and a half minutes or so. The epic of the album is Pyramid of Death that's a breath under four, partly because of a longer guitar solo from guest Diogo Felix.

The faster songs rarely pass three minutes because they simply don't have any interest in hanging around in any sense. They blister through what they do and then they're done, ready to give way for the next song and the one after that. Nuclear Addiction gets right down to business and wraps up in under two minutes, a space that somehow even provides space for both a guitar solo and a bass solo. That's pretty impressive. It doesn't cut anything out that's inherently needed. It simply gets down to business immediately and gets out of the way when it's done.

The shortest song is accordingly the one that goes the fastest, because CxAxTx is a thrash number that flirts pretty outrageously with grindcore. It works nicely as a blitzkrieg of a song that's done in forty seconds or so, with a few more dedicated to purring, a sheer burst of energy in between a couple of those three and a half minute songs that chug along nicely. There's a guest here too but on vocals; he goes by Clark and he does a pretty solid grindcore job given that he's known instead for a melodic death metal band a gothic doom/death metal band. That's versatility for you.

As always with new discoveries in thrash metal, I'll pass a copy of this over to my youngest son who has become quite the connoisseur of the genre and has the good taste to take me to see Flotsam and Jetsam this week for my birthday. He doesn't always agree with me and he sometimes finds things that I don't notice too, but it's rare when either of us recommend a thrash album that the other doesn't appreciate. I'm pretty sure he'll enjoy the walk home from work with this blaring in his ears.

For my part, I prefer the fast songs like Thrashing Over Thirty and Obedience, which doesn't shock me at all. However, I really like Toxic Carnage chugging too, which is less expected. Often, if a band shift a lot between fast thrash and mid pace chug, I'm far more polarised about which songs I like the most. Here, there's not much of a gap in my estimation between those fast songs and slower ones like Pyramid of Death and Trapped in a Vortex. While Toxic Carnage don't do much that's new here, that glimpse of grindcore aside, they play at both tempos very well indeed.

Sure, they would benefit from some more originality, but they generate some serious energy, an essential for thrash, and I dig the guitar solos, especially the one by Paulo Almeida on Echoes of the Future, as well as the prominent bass, which is placed with perfection in the mix by França. I don't know who's responsible for that, because I'm seeing Dionisio variously listed as responsible for bass, rhythm guitar and vocals on this album or vocals and lead guitar, because he was only a bass player in the band in its earliest years from 2008 to 2010. I'm not sure which to trust. I like it, whoever's responsible.

Perhaps my highest recommendation is the suggestion that I left this album thinking that it's an obvious choice to pull out every now and again as a palate cleanser after listening to other albums by other bands that didn't do the business for me. I'll always know that this one does.

Tuesday, 19 March 2024

Atrophy - Asylum (2024)

Country: USA
Style: Thrash Metal
Rating: 7/10
Release Date: 15 Mar 2024
Sites: Bandcamp | Facebook | Instagram | Metal Archives | Wikipedia

There are two new thrash albums out by American bands releasing their first studio work in what seems like forever. My son was very impressed by the new Morbid Saint and I'll catch up with that soon enough, but I remember Atrophy from back in the day, even though I wasn't living in Arizona then. I was on the other side of the pond in rural Yorkshire while they fired up Tucson in the wake of Phoenix bands like Flotsam and Jetsam, Sacred Reich and Surgical Steel. I'll be seeing Flot live in a couple of weeks time. Maybe I'll get the chance to see Atrophy soon too.

The only constant from the band back then and the band nowadays is Brian Zimmerman, the lead vocalist, because everyone else joined during the latest reformation, which is their second. After a split in 1993, three founder members came back in 2015 but that only lasted until 2020, and no new album emerged during that period to sit alongside the two from their original run. This revamp is only three years old now, but they've already knocked out this album and are apparently writing another one, so Zimmerman has clearly got the bit between his teeth and his new colleagues are happy to work with him and get things done in the studio.

And they are certainly getting things done. This album kicks off well with a string of tracks that do exactly what late eighties thrash did, mostly in the Exodus or Testament vein. They're fast but not obsessed with speed. They're technical without being progressive. They're tight and reliable. They have a carefully defined tone to the guitars that gives it a vicious edge but one that's controlled nonetheless. As all that might suggest, this album is all about balance and the bottom line is that this new Atrophy seem to have nailed that their first time out. All the things any thrash fan could want are here wrapped up in nine decently sized chunks.

There are catches, of course. Most obviously the style is very consistent throughout, so there's not a lot of variety between the nine tracks on offer. The only one that truly tries something different is Distortion, a slower track when it starts but one that drops off hard into much slower material still, initially giving a spotlight to Zimmerman's voice, which ventures more into speak-singing on this one than usual, but then becoming almost doomy in nature.

There's also an unusual intro to The Apostle and both an unusual intro and outro to Close My Eyes, but otherwise both explore the sort of material that we expect. The bottom line is that this isn't a progressive metal album where Atrophy try to forge a new direction for thrash metal; it's about a band who are happy to be back in business doing what they do as well as they can and throwing the results onto an actual studio album, no fewer than thirty-four years since its predecessor, Violent by Nature in 1990.

For the most part they succeed, but the faster songs are better to my way of thinking. Punishment for All is an excellent opener and Seeds of Sorrow matches it. I do like the first half a lot more than the second, but the latter is growing on me. American Dream is a chugger, but it's emerging from its peers after a few listens as a superior example of its type. I tend to drift away from chuggers on thrash albums unless they feature riffs or melodies or other components to elevate them. I didn't drift away much here, because slower songs often speed up and examples like American Dream or Five Minutes 'Til Suicide, a kinda sorta title track, are catchy enough for me.

The end result is that this is a capable return. It may not be the classic Atrophy line-up but it's still Atrophy and I'm happy to hear Zimmerman's voice again. This is a solid album that bodes well for the future but it's neither a glorious resurgence for the band nor a disappointment after so long away. It's a welcome album that does its job and moves on. The more they gig and write, the more likely the next album or the one after—and it seems pretty likely that we'll see more at this point—will be a gem. All the promise is there. Welcome back, folks and I hope to see you on stage soon!

Wednesday, 13 March 2024

Meanstreak - Blood Moon (2024)

Here's a name I haven't seen in a long while. Meanstreak may be better known today as the home of three women who happen to all be married to current members of Dream Theater, but, back in the eighties, they were just a thrash metal band and a pretty good one too, part of a a first wave of prominent American women in extreme metal, along with others like Debbie Gunn of Sentinel Beast and Ann Boleyn of Hellion and New Renaissance Records. Their only album came out back in 1988 and they had split up by 1994 but they appear to have reformed a couple of years ago with an initial single and EP to announce their return. It's great to see them back.

I remember them being faster than they are on this album, but I went back to Roadkill, which I've not listened to in years, and rediscovered that they were never the fastest thrash band from that era. However, Rubberneck, easily the fastest song here, is more comparable to their old material than the other three tracks here. The Dark Gift and Oh Father sound like thrash songs but simply have no interest in speeding up to thrash speeds, settling for technical heavy metal. Giant Speaks dips a little more into classic heavy metal, trawling in a little Black Sabbath to their slower paced thrash sound.

Needless to say, Rubberneck is my favourite song here, even if it doesn't approach the pace of the songs we might instinctively think cover the same lyrical content, like Whiplash and Rattlehead. I should add that it isn't about that at all, instead serving as commentary on the objectifying male gaze. However, I liked all four tracks a lot, partly because they manage to maintain an admirable intensity even on slower songs. To my mind, when thrash bands concentrate on the mid-pace, they often lose the intensity that thrash personifies. That doesn't happen here.

For instance, Oh Father stays stubbornly slow but in a claustrophobic way as if it surrounds us. It's never interested in generating many notes but all of them sustain and Lisa Martens Pace's bass is a thing of joy here, easily audible and powerfully relentless. Giant Speaks, which is the single off this EP, is the only chugger in the traditional sense. It's certainly faster than Oh Father but that's not the same thing as being fast.

These songs remain imaginative too. When other thrash bands slow down, they tend to play in the same way, just slower. Here, the slower pace gives the various members opportunity to do things that they either couldn't do or which just wouldn't work at speed. Bettina France, for instance, is able to endow her vocals with a lot of nuance here, playing with intonation to impart emphasis on how she wants to say something, not just on what she wants to say. On Roadkill, she was more like a typical soaring heavy/thrash metal vocalist. Here, she sings without losing any power.

And that's pretty much it, because this is only a four track EP running under twenty minutes. Only Oh Father exceeds five minutes and then only by one more. I hope the band get good feedback for this and a strong welcome back from the community too. They toured a couple of years ago as the support for John Petrucci's solo tour, which made sense if his wife Rena Sands, a founder guitarist of Meanstreak, was there anyway, but they deserve that sort of promotional push entirely on the merits of their music. I never got see them live back in the eighties and quietly assumed that that was never going to happen. Now it seems possible and I look forward to the opportunity.

Tuesday, 12 March 2024

Messiah - Christus Hybercubus (2024)

I'm pretty sure I've heard Messiah before, but I couldn't name what or when, so it doesn't matter. They're a Swiss band who started out playing death/thrash metal and have clearly evolved over a forty year period to the point where it's tough to describe what this, their seventh album actually sounds like. There's certainly death metal and thrash metal here, with certain songs leaping out to identify that way, but there's a lot more, enough that I'm going to back out of any one genre to label it simply progressive metal.

The death metal aspect is there from the beginning on the opening couple of songs, Sikhote Alin and Christus Hypercubus, but mostly in the harsh vocals of Marcus Seebach, debuting here as the replacement for long term vocalist Andy Kaina, who died in 2022. The music is mid-pace, so heavy metal more than thrash or death, but with driving elements that often hint that they're only one shift away from those more extreme genres. There are all sorts of odd moments too, like a quirky intro and a midpoint drop into an interesting vocal and drum section, that move it further into a prog metal mindset.

Once Upon a Time - Nothing - changes that, because it plays fast and makes the thrash/death tag suddenly feel entirely appropriate. Centipede Bite is faster still, feeling unashamedly thrash and doing everything that thrash is supposed to do. So yeah, Messiah definitely still play in those old genres even if they don't do it all the time, rather like Voivod, another highly idiosyncratic band who ignore genre boundaries and create precisely what they want to create, however critics end up defining it. The music matters, the definitions not so much.

However, in between Once Upon a Time - Nothing - and Centipede Bite is a song as different from that pair as could be comfortably imagined and yet remain metal. It's Speed Sucker Romance, an ironic name given that it ditches the speed entirely. It's a slow song, the riffs doomy and the lead guitarwork conjured up through feedback squeals. It reminded me a lot of the Lee Dorrian track on Dave Grohl's Probot album, but this clearly benefits from more modern production values. It's not unwilling to throw out an homage too, as I presume the churn sound towards the end is a nod towards Black Sabbath's Iron Man.

Soul Observatory and Acid Fish are fast but not frantically so, somewhere in between the openers and the faster tracks, meaning a fourth recurring tempo on one album. The pair of closing tracks, The Venus Baroness I and II, are obviously prog metal, with theatrical moments that make us feel like there's some sort of concept going on here, if only for a subset of the album that happens to be at the end without really ending the album. There's a quirky interlude after the blitzkrieg of Centipede Bite too that's entirely theatrical, Please Do Not Disturb - (While I'm Dying), with an Operation: Mindcrime sort of feel, but heavier.

And so I wasn't sure what to think of this versatility on a first listen. Of course, I was drawn toward the faster tracks, Centipede Bite especially, but I got a real kick out of Speed Sucker Romance and Acid Fish too, so this isn't a repeat of yesterday's Judas Priest album, where the success of one approach had an effect on my enjoyment of another, done equally well. I just struggled to figure out what Messiah see as their mission statement. Speed Sucker Romance, Centipede Bite and Please Do Not Disturb - (While I'm Dying) are next to each other on the album but sound like three different styles, if not three different bands.

Maybe what puzzles me most is that they tend to shift tempos from one track to another far more than they do during them and that feels surprising. Maybe it shouldn't. Maybe the draw here is in what links all those different tracks rather than what separates them and I suddenly realise that I may be thinking far too much again. There is a consistent tone that rolls across all these tracks, so perhaps I just need to listen to a broader swathe of Messiah to find the defining theme. I have an abiding feeling that, like someone like Voivod, as overlooked as they often seem to be, they may well be a lot of people's favourite band.

Thursday, 11 January 2024

Technology of Death - Skutočný nepriateľ (2024)

Country: Slovakia
Style: Thrash Metal
Rating: 7/10
Release Date: 11 Jan 2024
Sites: Bandcamp | Facebook | Instagram | YouTube

From something highly unexpected to something acutely familiar. I've never heard Technology of Death before, because this is their debut album, but I've heard this brand of thrash metal plenty of times. They hail from Slovakia, where they formed in 2019, and they don't do a lot that could be called original, but they do it very well indeed and it's one of the particular brands of metal that I can simply never have enough of: fast thrash with clean but rough vocals.

They start us out by giving us a false sense of security, because the intro, inevitably entitled Intro, is a minute of intricate acoustic guitar duet, and then the first track proper, Nenávisť, begins with the sort of repetitive chug that gives me sinking feelings. Clearly the guitarists here, Šuro and Andy, are highly capable, but I wondered about whether they'd speed up or keep this a chug fest. It's an entire minute before drummer Rasťo ups the pace and fortunately they mostly stay at the faster speed. When they slow down, it's more for reasons of dynamics than to try to make the pit churn.

The vocals come from bassist Tomáš, who probably thinks of himself as a bassist more than a lead vocalist, but he spits out lyrics in Slovak with admirable attitude and urgency. There's not a lot of polish on his voice but his rough rhythmic delivery works perfectly with this style of thrash, a fast but straightforward approach that's guaranteed to clean out your system, leaving you knackered but also rejuvenated. This often felt very German to me, with their ruthless efficiency and rough delivery, Kreator or Sodom generally speaking but with Destruction coming out too in the guitar solos. It doesn't shock to find out that the first track title, Nenávisť, translates to Hate.

I liked the first three tracks—Nenávisť, Koniec (The End) and T.O.D. (presumably just Technology of Death)—but Depresia felt like a step up with a gorgeous riff and a nice drop into a bass solo, with a just as nice shift back up into top gear again, and Sabbath Bloody Sabbath following it very well. That's not the cover that we expect it to be, by the way; it's an original song that merely adopts a thoroughly recognisable title for no apparent reason. These are the sort of blistering songs that make me wish I was three decades younger and more able to dive into the pit and lose myself for three and a half emphatic minutes.

Skutočný nepriateľ is strong too, firmly reminding that this isn't all rooted in Teutonic thrash. The vocals never sound like John Connolly, but the music behind them often reminded me of Nuclear Assault, that punky crossover edge on top of technical thrash. Of course, as I type that, this track shifted firmly into Iron Maiden territory, so it's probably fair to say that there's no obvious single influence here. And that's a good thing. This may sound familiar generally rather than conjuring up some sort of Slovakian spin on thrash metal, but it's still accomplished stuff that feels like it's effortless but still meaningful for the four musicians who founded the band and still comprise its line-up today.

So this sounds great to me. If you're a thrash fan generally, you're going to dig this. I like it here in a studio recording and Technology of Death sound precisely like the sort of band I want to stumble into a club and hear on stage. Trust me, I'm not going to be propping up the bar while they're on. I think the telling questions are going to come down to how much you value originality and how well it's all going to stick in the brain. I'm a big fan of originality and I'm not finding any here, but that isn't necessarily a bad thing because the musicianship is excellent and the effect is pristine. So, it falls to how memorable the songs are and that's not something I can answer yet. Ask me in a few days.

Whether they do or not, it wouldn't shock me to find myself coming back to this. It's fast, powerful and uncompromising. It's also highly consistent without the songs blurring into each other. This is the sort of thing I often throw on to cleanse my palate after an underwhelming release or if I need to reset after an unexpected gem. This is the sort of album that steals my focus away from what's stuck in my brain and also gifts me what energy I need to shift onto something else. I'll also run it by my son too, because this is the sort of thing he loves to listen to while he's walking home from work. I think he's going to dig this one too.

Thursday, 4 January 2024

Wanted Inc. - Dead for the First Time (2024)

Wanted Inc. aren't new kids. They've been performing under this name since 2010 and five further years before that as The Wanted. This is their fourth album, but it's my first by them, because the previous one, Embarrassment to the Establishment, dates back to 2018.

Frustratingly, it's a mixed bag from the outset. I was impressed from the outset because there's a tasty lead in to the opening track proper, Hostile Reaction, as a growing extended scream after the intro builds into the crunch. The catch is that the crunch feels quiet. Most albums I listen to tend to have a similarly levelled volume but this one needed to be turned up and, when I did that, it still didn't feel like it had the requisite crunch. The worst thing about the album is the production. Gradually I was able to adjust my ears but it's a weird feeling to listen to a new album in 2024 and have to compensate for the 2004 sound.

Often what that boiled down to is that I enjoyed what the band are doing, but wished I could hear them on stage as they're meant to sound. I wonder how many more songs would pop then than do now. The band sound very capable and, on my first time through, they alternated between feeling like a decent, albeit run of the mill, thrash band that were enjoyable enough but I could drift away from easily and a stronger thrash band who didn't want me to wander off so grabbed my attention back and told me in no uncertain fashion to quit getting distracted.

They did that a lot here. For every song that felt acutely routine, like Night Capturer, they followed up with a belter, in this instance Grilling the Globe. That's a fast song and I like Wanted Inc. at their fastest. The guitarwork blisters, courtesy of Hermann Weiß and Daniel Feuerer, even if both suffer from the production, and it remains strong even when they give way to a sample and then shift to chug mode to wrap up the song. Whatever speed they go on this song, they do it very right. Hannes Waschler, who has the longest tenure in the band, keeps a glorious beat too.

Unfortunately, Grilling the Globe remains the fastest track on the album, because I'd have liked to have heard a lot more at that speed, but there are others that blister, even at a slower pace. Mind Cleaner stubbornly stays midpace for far too long but, when it doe speed up, it's excellent. That's a common thread on this album, because I constantly wanted them to speed up and, every time they did and things felt right, they slowed back down again.

I should also mention that I tend to see Wanted Inc. listed as a thrash/death metal band, but I hear the first half of that consistently over the latter. I do see that Flo Schmöller is a new lead vocalist, joining this year along with Heiko F. Böhm on bass, and I wonder if his predecessor had more of an overtly death metal voice. There's maybe a hint of death growl in sustained syllables but that's a bit of a stretch. Mostly he sings in a traditionally rough thrash voice with more of a hint of shouted -core vocals than a death growl. He does the job but I wanted more edge than he had to offer.

This probably sounds like a negative review and I didn't intend it that way. A 6/10 from me is still a recommended rating. I try not to review albums that I don't believe are worthy, but I do wonder if Wanted. Inc's sound has changed over time. I found a lot of problems here but I also want to hear them live to see how they play on stage because I have a feeling I'd rather like them there without being hindered by this rather un-beefy production. I also want to hear how Schmöller sounds in a live environment. Of course, I'm a long way from Bavaria so I'm not likely to hear them live soon. I hope I get the chance at some point. In the meantime, I have three previous albums to check out.

Friday, 15 December 2023

Gama Bomb - Bats (2023)

Irish thrashers Gama Bomb have called this, their eighth album, their "weirdest" yet, and they're not wrong. There are many sounds here that we wouldn't expect on a thrash metal album, but I'd suggest that they all fit. Given what some of them are, just saying that surprises me, but it's quite the adventure and the sense of humour they maintain helps that mindset. My only problem came from so much of the influences here are very easily identifiable, meaning that this is somehow an innovative departure from the norm and an often derivative set of pastiches at the same time.

The forgettable sub-minute long intro leads into the opener, Egyptron, which is clearly one of the most innovative songs here, featuring as it does two highly unusual guests. Pioneering American rapper Egyptian Lover delivers a rap section against a saxophone backdrop in the Madness style, created by Gavin Kerins, neither of which is remotely expected on a thrash album. Neither are the vocal lines in the bridge that sound rather like Mike Patton of Faith No More. This is thrash metal and there's an excellent frenetic guitar solo from Domo Dixon to back that up, but it's hardly the thrash metal we're used to. Maybe we could call it the nuttiest thrash sound around.

Living Dead in Beverly Hills follows in much more traditional fashion, a frantic thrash track with an overt Anthrax sound, even if the vocals are split between lead singer Philly Byrne and bassist Joe McGuigan. It's almost as if the boys wanted to underline that, after such a departure to open the album, they weren't just going to leap off the rails over the rest of the album. This one's fast and impactful, so much so that it's done in just over two minutes, but its only nod to another genre is a guitar line borrowed from Grieg's In the Hall of the Mountain King.

That one's an obvious lift, because it's so well known a melody that you don't have to be a classical buff to recognise it. I have to wonder if the riff in Materialize is another one that I merely haven't recognised, because it's so insanely lively that it could be a cartoon theme tune, the sort of thing we might hear while Scooby and the Gang are running from zombies. Trollfest don't have anything this bouncy! There's Acid Reign here, I think, and the vocals shift up to the piercing levels of Bobby Ellsworth at its intensity peaks. I kept waiting for the electro-violence.

Most of the influences are more generic in nature, though, such as that obvious Anthrax sound on Living Dead in Beverly Hills. Oddly, these influences aren't all from the thrash genre. Judas Priest kind of count because they pioneered the genre; they show up occasionally in Rob Halford screams but also escalations and guitar solos and, most especially, on Dreamstealer, where the song plays like Judas Priest but with a David Lee Roth vibe to the vocals, of all things. And yes, every time I re-read that line, I wonder if I was insane when I took that note down but it's there.

Don't Get Your Hair Cut is sped up Tank with a decent side of Motörhead. It's a silly song, down to the stereotypical metal scream at the very end, but it's a lot of fun. There's more Tank on Bats in Your Hair too, but the vocals are more operatic, a cross between between a pair of different Robs, Halford and Gallagher. There's definitely some Raven here in the riffs of fast but not quite thrash sections. That Faith No More vibe is back at points on Secular Saw and the saxophone returns for Bats in Your Hair and sounds even more like Madness than Egyptron.

I have a love/hate thing going on with thrash bands who don't take things as seriously as the norm demands. I appreciate the depth the genre had in writing songs that warned about nuclear chaos and social issues, but it's also refreshing to bounce over to Anthrax sometimes to hear them sing about Judge Dredd or dip into hip hop or lounge music. It's OK to have fun with thrash metal and I haven't heard any thrash band clearly having this much fun without turning into parody, like, say, Lawnmower Deth or Metal Duck. I liked this a lot. It walks a very fine line but it walks it well. I like Gama Bomb being weird.

Tuesday, 21 November 2023

Sadus - The Shadow Inside (2023)

Sadus have been around for a very long time, dating back to 1985, and they've never split up, even if their members have often had other priorities, shall we say. Some have left but nobody new has ever joined, meaning that the quartet who formed Sadus are now only a duo. Darren Travis is the most obvious, as vocalist and guitarist—he also contributes the bass here—with Jon Allen behind the drumkit. Second guitarist Rob Moore left back in 1994 and bassist Steve DiGiorgio ceased to be involved in 2015.

That probably explains why they put out new albums so rarely. Their first three came out together, in 1988, 1990 and 1992, but, as every thrasher knows, that reaches a point in time when the musical landscape really wasn't conducive to a fast and technical thrash band. I'm actually impressed that they put out a fourth in 1997, but their fifth didn't come till a decade later in 2006 and this is their sixth, seventeen full years on from that. It's far from awful but it really isn't the sort of album that has been seventeen years in the making.

I remember Sadus being a strong technical thrash band, even if none of their songs have got stuck in my brain since the eighties the way so many of those of their peers have, but this feels more run of the mill. I enjoyed it, don't get me wrong, but thrash is one of my favourite genres, so I'm more forgiving of it than I am other genres. While the best of the best will connect with me like nothing else, I could listen to crappy thrash and still feel energized. This certainly isn't crappy but, even at its best, on tracks that blister like Ride the Knife, it's not what it could be.

It probably doesn't help that First Blood kicks off the album with an intro that's so reminiscent of Crimson Glory's Lost Reflection that I immediately found myself singing along with it. It develops into a decent thrash metal song, clearly American but not screaming of any particular band as an influence, even themselves. Sure, it's Bay Area rather than east coast but Sadus are from Antioch and that's in the San Francisco Bay Area, so that's hardly surprising.

Scorched and Burnt quickly leaps into Megadeth mode, with a pause in the instrumentation for a couple of snarling a capella lines in the Dave Mustaine style. There's clearly Megadeth in the rest of the song too, though the vocals shift away from him into a wide open screech that has to be the most and possibly only distinguishing mark on this album. It's Travis trying to do something more with his vocals whenever he isn't just operating in a routine thrash mode. The problem is that his approach doesn't extend to his instrumentation, which always feels like a backdrop.

The vocals really start to dominate in It's the Sickness. The riffs are reliable, the solos solid and the drumming furious, but they're all backdrops for the vocals to decorate. And, while the instruments play pure thrash, the vocals don't feel that constrained. They move across the genres, always with a thrash filter on them, but moving from traditional rough thrash vocals and Mustaine snarls to a set of hints at black shrieks and death growls, never quite reaching either but enjoying how close they get.

They're sometimes reminiscent of Martin Walkyier of Sabbat and Bobby the Blitz of Overkill, even Dani Filth of Cradle of Filth, but they're not quite so pristinely intonated as any of them. Instead of spitting out lyrics like machine gun bullets, which they do on the fastest material, they more often linger on sounds and then burst over slower songs and sections like fireworks. In verses, they're a lot more traditional, but, in the choruses, they become something more, elongating syllables and stretching sounds until they can't exist any more.

All the songs sound good but few register and which do tend to change on repeat listens. Ride the Knife is an unrelentless thrasher and it's easily my favourite song here. First Blood may follow it, a few blistering sections of Anarchy notwithstanding, but those are the only real commonalities. On one listen through, it might be The Shadow Inside, closing out the album, that reminds me that it has a simple but highly effective riff and some good solos. The next, my brain might skip that but tell me how much Overkill there is in The Devil in Me. None of these songs truly stick and few have much of a chance. It's just good background music for me.

And so this is only a 6/10 from me, as the target audience. If thrash isn't your thing, then you may be able to safely drop a point off that. And that's not good for a first album in seventeen years.

Thursday, 9 November 2023

Angelus Apatrida - Aftermath (2023)

I haven't bumped into Angelus Apatrida's music before, but they arrived with the millennium and put out a steady stream of albums, this being their eighth, two years after their self-titled album in 2021. They hail from Albacete in southern Spain and play thrash metal with quite a variety.

This album starts out relatively traditional, Scavenger playing firmly in speedy Bay Area style, but Cold features a chorus that wouldn't have felt out of place on the Within Temptation album that I reviewed yesterday. That's not unusual for this album, where verses sound like thrash verses but a lot of the choruses are big hookladen efforts that reach far beyond the genre. This one works in a commercial gothic metal style before launching right back into the traditional thrash.

Cold also shifts into crossover during its second half, reminding more of Anthrax than Death Angel, an approach which continues on Snob, the first of four tracks to feature a guest. On this one, that's Jamey Jasta from Hatebreed, who inevitably brings his hardcore background to the song, though the band remain technical behind him. If you're counting, that's three styles so far, each of which is built on technical thrash but doesn't stay there: Bay Area technical thrash, New York crossover and commercial gothic metal. Keep counting.

Those guests are a fascinating mix, so I should highlight them. Three are vocalists, but in different styles indeed. From Jasta's hardcore on Snob, they shift wildly to Spanish rapper Sho-Hai on What Kills Us All and Todd La Torre of prog metal legends Queensrÿche for Vultures and Butterflies. The fourth is a guitarist, Pablo García, best known for a heavy/power metal band called WarCry. That's quite a range and, for those wondering why one of these guys is a rapper, what Sho-Hai does here is fascinating. He almost sounds South American and there's a real Sepultura vibe to that track as it shifts into his territory during the second half. It has no pop element to it and his rapping style is fast, dangerous and a good fit. I don't say that too often.

Fire Eyes is a nice fast thrash song, so I don't know if García just plays along or whether that's him providing an elegant intro. There are more of those on To Whom It May Concern and Gernika, two songs without guests, so maybe not. It's not thrash at all during the midsection, instead a sort of heavy/prog metal song, with a very tasty guitar solo. It often reminds of Iron Maiden, as it did at points during the intro. Again, it has a big hookladen chorus, which only underlines just how much Maiden is on this song. Of course there's a heavy metal bias to Vultures and Butterflies, but it's a slightly more progressive one, as befits the guest.

So, how many genres are we up to now? I'm used to thrash albums lately delineating themselves in pace. There are bands playing old school proto-extreme metal with a thrash base, bands playing a relatively straightforward fast thrash and there are bands who have slowed down a lot and spend much of their time chugging at mid tempo. I have a personal bias towards the faster bands but I'm very nostalgic for that proto-extreme era and find a lot of those bands fascinating. It's chuggers I find less interesting, because the approach gets old for me.

Angelus Apatrida refuse to be thrown into any one of those buckets. They're closer to the middle one than the other two, and I'm happy for that as they blister nicely on songs like Scavenger, Fire Eyes and the instrumental parts of Rats. However, there are plenty of songs here that work at an overtly chuggier pace, Rats moving there during the verses, and others are happy to drop out of thrash entirely to become elegant heavy or prog metal, most obviously To Whom It May Concern, when it's not blistering as it does briefly.

That makes this a highly varied album and the variety really works in its favour. Instead of losing a listener like me by stubbornly sticking at mid tempo, they mix it up from track to track and often in individual songs. I'm good with the chuggy ones because it's not going to be long before there's a speedy part and I love those. I'm happiest there, but a drop into something else for a while keeps everything interesting, especially when they launch into another big hook of a chorus, then blister out of it with heads down and fingers flying.

In short, I like this a lot and, while I appreciate the faster songs the most, it's not as clear cut as I'd usually expect. I like the variety they bring to the table and that ought to translate really well into a live environment. They tour a lot, I believe, though I'm not sure they've made it over to this side of the pond, certainly not while I've been paying attention. I hope they do because I'd love to check them out live. In the meantime, I have seven previous albums to locate to see how they built to this style.

Thursday, 19 October 2023

Nervosa - Jailbreak (2023)

It's only been two and a half years since I reviewed Nervosa's fourth album, Perpetual Chaos, but a lot has changed with the band since then. Traditionally a trio, they were a four piece at that point, with Prika Amaral the sole remaining founder member. She's the band's guitarist and has been for its entire run but, soon after Perpetual Chaos, Helena Kotina joined as a second guitarist. Amaral was also the lead vocalist for year when the band was formed in 2010 and now she is again, as Diva Satánica left in 2022. The rest of the line-up shifted too, as bassist Mia Wallace has been replaced by Hel Pyre and Michaela Naydenova is the latest in a line seven drummers, Nanu Villalba showing up after Perpetual Chaos and gone already.

Given such continual flux—perpetual chaos, we might say—we might expect this to be transitional material as the new line-up, half of which wasn't even in place at the beginning of the year, figures out what they want to do and how they'll do it. Well, that's emphatically not the case. They kick in hard with Endless Ambition, sounding not unlike Kreator, and they demonstrate just what they can do with two guitarists in a couple of instrumental sections that I only wish were longer. The tempo shifts a lot with some neat escalations and that continues into Suffocare too.

Both these are excellent songs but Ungrateful ups the ante and absolutely blisters. It's fast out of the gate but it gets faster and then it gets playful. There's a lot here to enjoy, with buzzsaw guitar, frantic drumming and some neat tempo changes. It may well be the best track on the album, which is why it isn't too surprising that it slows down afterwards so Seed of Death can have an intro. The best Nervosa songs are the fast ones and Ungrateful has a real competitor in Kill or Die, which is a particularly vicious old school thrash song. And then Gary Holt shows up for When the Truth is a Lie to add extra depth to the guitar sound.

It's definitely the guitars that I followed most here. I love them when they're buzzing riffs through my skill. I love them when they get elegant, as they do on Seed of Death. I love them when they do something more unexpected, the solo on the title track sounding rather like what Brian Robertson was doing for Motörhead on the Another Perfect Day album. However, I also have to call out both Naydenova's drumming, which is appropriately varied but always top notch, whether she's raging on the fast songs or adding layers to slower ones, and the solid production. This album is far more in your face than its predecessor and the drums are perfectly placed in the mix.

Pyre does exactly what she needs to do on bass without ever stealing the spotlight, so that leaves Amaral's vocals, which are also more vicious than her predecessor's. Diva Satánica wasn't without death metal in her voice, but Amaral's is harsher but still enunciated. It never quite reaches death growl territory but it comes close at points, like on Gates to the Fall. Check out her introduction to Behind the Wall to see how vicious she gets, spitting out her lyrics with fury. It all works nicely with the vicious guitars for a real in your face sound. I like this new Nervosa.

Now, I've always liked Nervosa because they tend to play their thrash fast and furious, which is how I like it best. However, they don't stay in full gear throughout, mixing up the tempos to keep these songs interesting, and rarely dropping into chug sections. I'm starting to dread them on albums of late, because so many new thrash bands seem to be happy at a mid-pace, but there's a stellar chug on Sacrifice, aided by Amaral's rough vocals that keep it from feeling too soft. There's always some abrasion in her voice and that maintains an edge on these songs even on those rare occasions that they might lose it otherwise.

Given that there were a couple of guests on the previous album and I've already mentioned one in this review, I should add that there's a second guest on Superstition Failed in Lena Scissorhands, a Moldovan vocalist who sings metalcore/nu metal for Infected Rain and more traditional hard and heavy for American band Death Dealer Union. She brings a new angle to this album, without going too far beyond Nervosa's style. Holt, of course, plays into it perfectly, so Where the Truth is a Lie is just a Nervosa song with three guitars instead of two.

This is their fifth album and I'm already looking forward to their sixth. I just wonder who might be in the line-up at that point, in addition to Prika Amaral. Keeping this line-up would not be a bad thing.

Wednesday, 11 October 2023

Prong - State of Emergency (2023)

Well, here's an interesting release. I found Prong early, when they played a raw form of crossover, that was often straightforward punk as it was thrash metal, but they had changed considerably by the time I could introduce my son to their music. He's a fan, but not of everything they've done, as there's such a variety there. I don't believe I've heard their previous album, Zero Days, from 2017, but it seems to have trawled in elements from across their career. This does likewise, though it has a real vicious streak as it kicks off that sadly fades away relatively quickly.

The vicious track is The Descent and it initially reminds heavily of Slayer in old school thrash mode, but finds more of a groove metal vibe as it grows. Moving from Slayer into Pantera ought to make a lot of fans happy but they're not done with just those influences. There's some of that old school hardcore here too and the following title track gets bouncy with industrial flavour that only builds with the song. Main man Tommy Victor, who still handles both vocals and guitars, almost becomes an MC on this one.

He does more of that as the album runs on, generally becoming less thrash and more groove with the industrial texture never far away. That holds mostly true, though Back (NYC) ten tracks in is an aggressive hardcore song that goes against the flow in a welcome fashion. Oh, and there's also a song called Disconnected that might just be there to mess with us, given that feels like a post-punk pop song by someone else that's given much heavier treatment here, as if it used to be a Depeche Mode song and Prong wanted to kick it into high gear.

As far as I can tell, Disconnected isn't a cover, but there is one of those here to wrap up the album and it's just as unexpected, because it's Rush's Working Man. It's a really good cover, feeling close to the original but run through a notably heavy filter for a sort of Sabbath does Rush approach. It's especially strong in its instrumental midsection, which, for all the aggression of The Descent and Back (NYC), is the most joyous part of this album for me.

The other element here that I should call out is what feels almost like a party atmosphere, albeit here and there rather than continual. One minute, they're partying on a song like Non-Existence, like Victor wants to jam with Anthrax on a metal take on a pop punk song; the next they're acutely serious, playing up a politically aware angle that's purer hardcore on a song like Who Told Me. The style shifts but crucially so does the attitude. On the livelier songs, they're chill and enjoying life. On the serious ones, they're back to being pissed at whatever the song is about. It can seem a bit odd that they can be so comfortable being both at once.

It feels to me like the more serious songs are going to be more popular with Prong's punk fans and likely their industrial fans too, as they're all about drive and message, though they're still pretty accessible to a thrash audience. However, those thrash fans may well prefer the livelier songs that play more with riffs and melodies. Let's see if those different fanbases receive it differently or if, by this point, Prong fans are just on board with all these musical elements because they've stayed with the band as they've travelled through all of them.

Certainly, as a thrash fan, I'm less impressed with songs like Obeisance, which work as bludgeoning rhythm, and more enthused with the blistering speed shown in the first half of The Descent or the musicality in the middle of Working Man. Then again, sometimes songs do shift focus, Compliant a prime example, and that can affect our reception greatly. Initially, it's very much shouty hardcore, a hard message over jagged punctuating rhythms that I'm not particularly fond of, but it gradually turns into a metal song with real flow that I can't fail to see as an album highlight every time.

And so this is a mixed bag for me. It's all done well, but I wanted more of how it started and how it ended up without as much of what came in between. It doesn't get old though, as fresh on a third time through as a first, so it's definitely strong material. If you can enjoy the shifts in genre, this is going to be a welcome new album from Prong, especially as it's their first in six years. Now, I need to find out how my son will receive it.

Friday, 28 July 2023

Legion of the Damned - Poison Chalice (2023)

Here's another album from a band I've reviewed before that does pretty much the same thing in pretty much the same way. Legion of the Damned are Dutch and they've been around since 2005, a further thirteen years before that as Occult. They play a hybrid of thrash and death metal that's a lot more focused on the thrash side of that, with a little death as a texture, mostly in the vocals of Maurice Swinkels. Last time out was Slaves of the Shadow Realm in 2019, their seventh album, and that makes this their eighth.

I haven't heard that since reviewing it, but most of what I said about it holds true here. However, I clearly like it a little more than its predecessor, because this is a 7/10 for me rather than the 6/10 I gave to that one. Their biggest drawback is that the songs are so similar in approach that they blur together into a solid clump of metal that cleans out our systems for three quarters of an hour and then ends.

Maybe they're doomed to that middle ground where they're clearly very good at what they do but what they do is so invariable that a stronger album will be a 7 and a lesser one will be a 6. They're just too good and too consistent to drop any lower but too unwilling to vary their formula to climb any higher. And, while I'd usually see that as a negative, it can sometimes be a positive. There are days when I want to sit back and close my eyes and deep dive into the music, eager to hear things I have never heard before. However, there also days when I just want to show up to a gig and let the band bludgeon me into oblivion for an hour. Legion of the Damned seem like a good choice for the latter.

What that means to the listener is reliability. Every song here, and there are ten on offer, blisters along at a thrash pace and ought to generate some serious activity in the pit. Maybe Skulls Adorn the Traitor's Gate is a little faster and a little more emphatic than the rest, but it's a close call. I'd definitely call out the solos in the middle of this one as the most furious on the album though. It's an impeccable song that reminds me just how much I love thrash metal, as if I'd ever forget. On the other end of a very short spectrum, maybe The Poison Chalice closes out with a little less emphasis and a little more atmosphere. For a while, it's more Seasons of the Abyss than Reign in Blood, but it ramps up to the usual tempo soon enough.

And while that comparison is fair, it speaks specifically to the distance between a band's extremes rather than between that band and this. The sound here is always Teutonic, so Kreator are the key comparison rather than Slayer or anyone else American, and when they move away from a Kreator sound for a moment, it's only to go as far as Destruction. The only real difference is the added dab of death, which is there in the tone being a little deeper and in the added growl in Swinkel's voice.

For an album almost inherently devoid of anything interesting for a critic to say—either you'll love this or you won't—that's about it. There's nothing much else to add. So there's a softer intro to the opener, Saints in Torment? It doesn't matter. When the intro's done thirty seconds or so in, Legion of the Damned leap immediately up to full gear and stay there pretty much throughout. Do I have a favourite track? Not really. Maybe Skulls Adorn the Traitor's Gate because of those killer solos. It seems fair to call out Progressive Destructor too as so quintessential Teutonic thrash that it almost felt like I knew the vocal cadences on a first listen. It's a textbook.

Bottom line: this is good stuff. It's just the same good stuff throughout. Do you care?

Tuesday, 16 May 2023

Overkill - Scorched (2023)

14th April, 2023 was quite a red letter day for thrash fans, though it was also a curse for me due to my very deliberate policy not to duplicate genres within any week. Of course that was the day the new Metallica album dropped, but I was just as enthused seeing new albums from Holy Moses and Overkill. Of those three, Metallica may have found their way back to thrash after major depatures and Holy Moses took a long break, but Overkill have kept at it throughout, diversifying their style, sure, but never truly leaving it and they always deliver live.

I have to say that I wasn't convinced by the first couple of minutes of the opening title track. It was good but not great, which is what I thought of their previous album, The Wings of War. It wasn't a bad album but I wanted more from it, because I'm used to more from Overkill, who in a whole slew of ways are comparable to Therapy? Both have their roots firmly in punk and both firmly kept their musical integrity in the face of trend changes. However, Overkill were earlier, during my formative time with music, so they're ingrained in my musical identity; they emphatically turned to metal, a retained punk attitude notwithstanding; and I kept checking in with their new material even after I drifted away from music into the demands of adulthood.

The good news is that Scorched the song picked up for me, with a neat if surprising drop into Black Sabbath territory a couple of minutes in. I particularly dug the instrumental section in the second half, with a hyperactive bass from D. D. Verni and a tasty guitar solo from Dave Linsk. I'm still not sold on it as a complete track, even after a few listens, but it does a lot that's excellent. But Goin' Home is quintessential Overkill, right down to its gorgeous escalations and blitzkrieg of an finalé that will surely have your head banging in your office chair. The Surgeon picks up precisely where Goin' Home leaves off, Bobby "Blitz" Ellsworth spitting out bars in his patented fashion. Suddenly, this album feels a lot stronger than its predecessor.

It's definitely a mixed album, but there's a lot that's good here and it isn't remotely all the same. Goin' Home and The Surgeon remain my favourite songs, but Harder They Fall is another stormer, even if the band mix up the tempo rather often. I do like my Overkill fast and every fast song here is a highlight. My other favourite, though, is Won't Be Comin' Back, which shifts firmly into power metal. It kicks off like Iron Maiden and gets even more interesting when the vocals show up. It's a new sound for Overkill and I like it. I like Wicked Place too, even though it's a stubbornly mid-pace song. There are a couple more drops into Sabbath territory and there's a neat cello to wrap up.

The other song worthy of mention is one that I'm not as sold on but it's far more unusual than the brief vocal experimentation on Won't Be Comin' Back. This one feels like a breather after a set of energetic thrash tracks, whether mid-pace or faster. Of all things, it reminds me of the Police for a minute, a much heavier approach to the Police but the Police nonetheless. It crunches in, naturally, but it stays slow, and drops back into the opening mindset as well. Kudos to the band for taking on something very different, but I wouldn't call it the success it could be.

I don't want to dismiss the other tracks, because there are a host of moments that stand out even on the lesser material. Twist of the Wick has some interesting phrasings, both on guitar and in the vocals, while Bag o' Bones has the sort of chantalong chorus that some bands would kill for. This is at its best when it's fast though, or shifting up and down between high gears, and a few songs are screaming out for one of Overkill's patented injections of speed. The one stylistic shift I'm eager to hear more of is the power metal explored in Won't Be Comin' Back that sometimes sounds like an old school NWOBHM influence but just as often more recent European power metal.

Where this leads me is an odd situation because I'm going to give this the same 7/10 rating that I gave The Wings of War. However, this is clearly a better album to me. I thought about a 6/10 when I rated that one and decided that it wouldn't be fair. Here, I often thought about an 8/10 but I don't feel it's at that level consistently enough to make that fair. So think of the previous album as a low 7/10 and this one as a high 7/10. This is something a rating out of 100 would solve but I'm not going there. Let's just say both these albums are worth your time if you're into punky thrash, but this is the one you should start with.

Tuesday, 9 May 2023

Holy Moses - Invisible Queen (2023)

I was a little surprised when I saw a new Holy Moses album being released in 2023, but I was also a very happy chappy indeed, because I loved what these guys were doing in the late eighties and I'd no idea at all that they were still around. It turns out that they continued until 1994, perhaps due to the changes wrought by grunge in the States not being quite so emphatic in Europe, and stayed gone until the new millennium, reforming in 2000 and adding five albums to the seven they put out during their original incarnation. However, this is their first in nine years, a long gap indeed for a generally prolific band.

Holy Moses play thrash metal in the Teutonic style, rooted in speed metal with rough but not harsh vocals. hardly surprising given that they're a German band from Aachen. I remember liking them a lot but I haven't heard them in decades and this reminds me just how unusual they were. For one, I remember them getting much more technical than many of their peers, with intricate guitarwork and instrumental passages that put them more in parity with Sieges Even and Mekong Delta than Destruction and Kreator. For another, they had a female vocalist, Sabina Classen, who's the one and only constant in the band throughout its lifetime.

Now, she wasn't alone, given that Doro was pioneering heavy female vocals with Warlock, but she was much rougher in delivery and became quite the pioneer, along with Ann Boleyn, Debbie Gunn and the late Dawn Crosby in the States. She's certainly one of the invisible queens of metal, from a time long before Angela Gossow shocked the world in 2000 when she took over as the lead vocalist of Arch Enemy, and she's sounding on the top of her game here. I ought to dive back into The New Machine of Liechtenstein after this review, with Finished with the Dogs as a tasty chaser. And then I should catch up with the far too many albums I haven't heard.

This sounds like Holy Moses from the outset, but a little more so in almost every regard. Classen is a little harsher than I remember, but not by much. Maybe she's just benefitting from 21st century production, given that the albums I loved are around thirty-five years old now and technology has moved on massively. The guitars, here played by Peter Geltat, seem more biting and more urgent, with possibly the same cause. Gerd Lücking keeps a little faster pace on drums, which is never bad in my book. I always like my thrash fast, even though Holy Moses manage midpace sections neatly as well.

The biggest difference between this and my possibly faulty memory is just how overt the basswork of Thomas Neitsch is. Like Geltat, he used to play for a thrash band from Berlin called Desilence, so may have brought him into the band, and they work together well. There are moments here where it sounds like he firmly believes that he's playing lead, which I'm never upset to hear a bass player do. The early gem is Cult of the Machine and he's all over that song like a rash, with a peach of an encore in Order Out of Chaos, before continuing in this vein throughout the album.

And, while I might prefer Cult of the Machine, Order Out of Chaos may be the defining song of the current state of Holy Moses. There are points where it feels like it's going to veer so wildly out of control that it's going to fail horribly any moment now, what with Neitsch soloing in one direction and Geltat in another, but it never does because these guys know exactly what they're doing and the result is something that had me throwing up my arms in admiration. It really is what it says on the label—order out of chaos—and that's the defining message of the album. Invisible Queen is a worthy and appropriate title, but Order Out of Chaos may have been better still.

There's a lot more to come, because the title track shows up next and that's only marks a third of the way through a dozen songs. What's more, there's an edition with a second disc that covers all the same ground but with guest vocalists. I haven't listened to it yet because I'm concentrating on the album proper, but I will because it features a teasing list of replacements for the one constant in the band, an interesting approach indeed.

The most obvious are fellow German thrash legends, Tom Angelripper and Andreas Geremia from Sodom and Tankard respectively, but Bobby Ellsworth of Overkill and Jens Kidman of Meshuggah get a track each too, and there's a string of modern female vocalists who owe plenty to Classen's blazing of the trail, like Marloes Voskuil of Izegrim (now Haliphron), Diva Satanica of Bloodhunter, Rægina of Dæmonesq and, most obviously, Dani Karrer of German thrash band Headshot.

Not everything is up to those openers and I'd say that the most obvious highlights all arrive early on the album, but nothing lets the side down and everything is enjoyable and refreshing, with so many other German thrash bands making firm departures from their sound lately. This sounds like Holy Moses throughout and it's agreeably uncompromising about that. Outcasts and Too Far Gone are the closest on the second side to matching the early highlights of the first. Like the Choose the Juice album before it, I think I have to go with an 8/10 here, because it's definitely closer to it than it is to a 7. And I think it's growing on me more with each listen. Welcome back, folks!

Monday, 23 September 2024

Tuesday, 10 September 2024

Monday, 3 June 2024

Friday, 12 April 2024

Tuesday, 2 April 2024

Tuesday, 19 March 2024

Wednesday, 13 March 2024

Tuesday, 12 March 2024

Thursday, 11 January 2024

Thursday, 4 January 2024

Friday, 15 December 2023

Tuesday, 21 November 2023

Thursday, 9 November 2023

Thursday, 19 October 2023

Wednesday, 11 October 2023

Friday, 28 July 2023

Tuesday, 16 May 2023

Tuesday, 9 May 2023

Search This Blog

Index Pages

Reviews Archive

Labels

About Me

My Other Web Sites

Blogs Worth Visiting

Total Pageviews

Translate