What are you listening to now? : The Pit Edition
Insane - Wait and Pray (2005)
Wait and Pray is the sole album from Italian thrashers Insane and is blatant Show No Mercy worship as well as being pretty damn awesome. I love this album, there's not a weak track on it and it's a travesty that the band never released anything else.
Daniel, Vinny I suggest you give this a listen when you can.
Demoniac - So It Goes (2020)
For the longest time I believed that thrash metal held no more surprises for me. That, however, was before I had heard Demoniac's incredible 2020 sophomore release, So It Goes. Sure, I have been very impressed by the vitality of the contemporary South American thrash scene, but the albums I had heard to this point were in the main existing tropes, taken and sharpened to the point of lethality. Some excellent stuff that had rekindled my interest in new thrash metal material, but Demoniac have gone well beyond that and So It Goes is a complete revelation to my jaded sensibilities. They play intense thrash metal with blackened vocals and hints at progressive tendencies and with a technical proficiency that is exceedingly impressive. The opening couple of tracks illustrate that these guys can out-thrash the shit out of almost anyone currently playing thrash metal. Fast, vibrant riffing, snarling vocals and a rhythm section that will destroy your apartment block if they play within a mile of it, deliver everything you could ever want from a thrash metal album. Then, following the opening one-two salvo, Extraviado opens up with a.. jazz clarinet. This is a weird and wonderful kind of doom and jazz number that may well leave you scratching your head, but I personally think is a glorious curveball that lets you regain some composure before the next neck-mangler. Equilibrio fatal is another riff-fest of lightning-powered thrash that will remove the skin from any unprotected body parts as it hurtles from riff to riff and contains some terrific soloing and superb basswork from Vicente Pereira.
This then brings us to the second half of the album, which consists solely of the almost twenty-minute suite of the title track which is a thrash metal tour de force and the track where Demoniac really show their chops and leave the competition eating their dust. Riff follows riff, solos rise and fall, that awesome, crunchy bass keeps baring it's teeth, Javier Ortiz snarls and sneers his way through the lyrics and our old friend that crazy clarinet even makes a reappearance. This track is one of the most glorious, OTT celebrations of thrash metal you are ever likely to hear and with the searing power of the shorter tracks from side one makes for one of the greatest thrash albums I have ever heard. Believe me, if this was released in the late eighties this would still be held up as an out and out classic. If, like me, you thought thrash metal was dead then spin So It Goes and behold thrash's Lazarus-like resurrection.
Hellish - The Spectre of Lonely Souls (2018)
It seems that the factories that used to crank out US thrash riffs have relocated to South America and, more specifically, Chile. It is insane how many great thrash albums have come out of Chile in recent times whilst thrash flounders elsewhere in the world. Hellish hit straight between the eyes with almost relentlessly febrile thrash riffs, intense drums and basswork and savage vocals. They take the intensity of Slayer and Kreator, set the pacing at crossover thrash speed and then weave in a little Immortal-like black metal influence. This is serious face-ripping shit and they make it work because they have the riffs and we all know that in thrash metal the riffs rule the roost.
4/5
Slaughtbbath - Alchemical Warfare (2019)
Slaughtbbath are a three-piece blackened thrash outfit from Chile. They started out as a straight up, balls-out black metal band playing supercharged black metal with relentless fury, but for their 2019 album Alchemical Warfare (only their second full-length release, despite a plethora of splits and eps), they took a huge fistful of the thrash of the teutonic giants Kreator and Sodom and chucked it into the melting pot along with the furious black metal of their previous releases. They fire off riffs like rockets on Bonfire Night (or July 4th if you insist) lighting up the sky with fire and fury, tearing through track after track in an almost manic assault on the listener's eardrums. Their blackened thrash leaves little room for wanky showmanship, consequently there isn't as much focus on solos as a lot of thrashers may want and most of the solos are of the short, sharp shock variety as favoured by Slayer, but that is a small price to pay for such outright aggression and savagery. The only respite from the ceaseless onslaught is held within Rejoined Into Chaos when the band do slow it down a little, although they can't manage to restrain themselves for the whole track and unleash the most extravagant soloing of the album towards it's final fadeout.Track titles like Ritual Bloodbath, Prophetic Crucifixion and Amulets of Carnage should leave you in no doubt as to where these guys are coming from. This is no touchy-feely metal as is becoming en vogue in some metal circles, this is pure unadulterated violence and horror, making no excuses and issuing no apologies for it. In other words, the foundation that thrash metal was built on and too many metal bands have forgotten about.
After seeing Daniel's reviews and genre-taggings in the Southern Metal thread, I felt like doing the same thing for one of the most stylistically divided albums I've heard from one of my favorite bands:
It's been 3 years since I've reviewed this album where after the modern metalcore sound of their first 2 albums, Trivium branched out into mostly a scream-reduced thrash metal Crusade with their third album. I had never really submitted this album to the Hall of Judgement because 1. I had a couple other judgement submissions in my mind that each involved a Trivium album, and 2. I respect their status as a metalcore band and at the time didn't dare to propose getting one of their albums removed from The Revolution. So before I declare Judgement Submission Day on this album, here's how I would tag the genres in the 13 tracks:
1. Ignition - technical thrash metal
2. Detonation - technical thrash/progressive metal
3. Entrance of the Conflagration - technical thrash/speed metal
4. Anthem (We are the Fire) - classic heavy/speed metal
5. Unrepentant - thrash metal
6. And Sadness Will Sear - mid-tempo heavy metal
7. Becoming the Dragon - thrash metal with melodic metalcore bridge and power metal lyrics
8. To the Rats - thrash metal
9. This World Can't Tear Us Apart - 7-string heavy metal semi-ballad
10. Tread the Floods - technical thrash/progressive metal
11. Contempt Breeds Contamination - thrash/groove metal
12. The Rising - arena rock-style heavy metal
13. The Crusade - 7-string instrumental progressive/technical thrash/speed/heavy metal
So based on what I've analyzed, I can consider Trivium's The Crusade a mix of genuine thrash, tech-thrash, and classic heavy metal with some secondary speed/progressive metal influences. The closest thing to metalcore this album even remotely has in the screamed pre-solo bridge in "Becoming the Dragon", so I have no idea what came to dozens of RYM users' minds to vote in melodic metalcore. So yeah, it's time for another judgement submission coming soon...
Megadeth - Rust in Peace
THese guys are incredible thrashers. This is a Pit essential if you ask me.
I've always quite liked "Into The Dark Past". It kinda sits in that grey area between thrash metal & speed metal, doesn't it? I find the quality of the tracklisting to be a bit inconsistent (particularly on the B side) but the highlights are strong enough to overcome the weaker material in my opinion. I've got it at 3.5/5 personally.
Flames of Hell - Fire and Steel (1987)
Is there a special genre for "metal with vocals that sound like a turkey being strangled"? I really wanted to be in a band when I was a teenager but put that dream to rest when I realised I had neither skill nor natural talent. Evidently these guys weren't as self-aware as I was! I only listened to this in order to vote on a Hall submission and I will never forgive you guys for it. This was one of the absolute worst metal albums I have ever heard. Of course because it's from an Icelandic band all the tr00 cvltists hail it as a first wave black metal classic, but guess what? The emperor has no fucking clothes!!
1/5 (I originally had it as a 1.5 but every time I think about it it sounds worse in my head).
Exciter - Long Live the Loud (1985)
Exciter never played much of a part in my metal world. When I first encountered them on the Hell Comes To Your House compilation, they were massively overshadowed by Metallica and, in my mind at least, they never recovered from that shortfall. That is, until recently when I have been revisiting a lot of the stuff from the early eighties that I missed or gave short shrift to first time around. As a consequence, I have checked out Exciter's first three albums over the last few weeks and I have been pleasantly surprised by what I hear. They were named after Judas Priest's opener from Stained Class and that is a fitting place for them to acquire their monicker, being one of the speediest, most adrenaline-fuelled of JP's earlier tracks. Exciter do actually kick ass and, especially if taken within context, they were pretty damned fast for their time. They took the heavy metal of Priest and supercharged it with Venom-like aggression (minus the satanic schtick) and produced something which is vital-sounding and, yes indeed, exciting. Whilst not being 100% reliant on speed - they do occasinally throttle things back, such as on Long Live the Loud's closing track Wake Up Screaming - velocity is where they excel. Speed metal was very well served by these Canadian's during those mid-eighties years when Venom seemed to be in terminal decline and, along with Belgium's Acid, Exciter were probably the best of the speed metal brigade as they battled to be heard against the thrash metal tsunami that was breaking over the mid-eighties. I am glad to finally have given Exciter the time they deserve and indeed I now recognise them as a reasonably important act in the eighties metal expansion and although none of their releases will ever match up to those Metallica eighties' albums, they were vital to a much eclipsed metal sub-genre in speed metal.
4/5
Lååz Rockit - No Stranger to Danger (1985)
I could be quite stubborn when I was younger and if I took against something then that was that. One thing I despised with a passion (and still do, to be honest) was glam/hair metal and anything connected to it. The problem was, that if I got it into my head that something was glam metal then I completely blanked it from my life. Lååz Rockit were one of those who fell foul of my prejudice, by the most tenuous of excuses which was that they had a name that sounded glam. Yes, I really was that pigheaded that I didn't even look into it further, but condemned them even without a trial!
Anyway, I have since found out, of course, that Lååz Rockit aren't glam metal at all, nor were they ever and so I have recently been checking them out, first via third album, Know Your Enemy, which was a terrific thrash / USPM metal record that I enjoyed a lot. I then moved onto the debut, City's Gonna Burn which was a reasonable example of mid-eighties, twin guitar heavy and speed metal.
So today I have been checking out sophomore No Stranger to Danger and I gotta say upfront, this is my least favoured of the band's first three albums. The band seem to have been making a conscious effort to produce an album of sing-along metal anthems and the majority of the tracks feel a bit flaccid to me as a result. Guitarists Phil Kettner and Aaron Jellum do make a plucky effort to save these tracks with some high velocity solos, but the riffs are quite mundane and the choruses are designed to get a crowd singing along. Unsurprisingly my favourite tracks are the more thrashy Backbreaker and Wrecking Machine which are more indicative of where the band were heading for the follow-up and stand head and shoulders above the rest of the material, particularly Wrecking Machine, which at least ends the album on a high.
Ultimately, for me, an unsatisfying slab of heavy metal that only offers occasional glimpses of what the band are really capable of.
3/5
New Enforced, War Remains came out yesterday. Vinny approved.
Anthrax - Among the Living (1987)
You know, it really chafes me that Anthrax get so much shit and people scorn their inclusion in the so-called "Big Four". I'm sure this was originally because of some west coast / east coast thing. With three great albums, Among the Living, Spreading the Disease and Persistence of Time surely they did as much as the others to justify inclusion? Certainly no less than Megadeth I would suggest. They also had quite a unique sound within the B4, with Scott Ian's choppy riffs and Joey Belladonna's more USPM-like vocals. Sure, they went off a bit of a cliff in the end, but, to one degree or another, all four bands did. Anyway, this is one of my all-time favourite thrash albums and I would sit it proudly next to Reign in Blood and Master of Puppets without any qualms whatsoever, fuck whatever anyone else thinks.
At this point Flotsam and Jetsam have really honed in on what they're doing and, even though I'm not incredibly impressed by it, I gotta give them points for consistency. Ever since their self titled album in 2016 they've had a string of solid releases that don't hold any surprises, but have a few key songs that are exactly what I want out of their more accessible and hooky Thrash Metal sound. F&J are about as straightforward as they come nowadays with fast and furious, but still tight riffing that complements Eric A.K.'s soaring vocals that, for me, are the big selling point of this band compared to other legacy Thrash acts. Although it feels like I've heard this all before from their previous albums, F&J still have a knack for writing great choruses that are absolute earworms, like "The Head of the Snake" and the succinct title track "I Am The Weapon". Sadly everything else on this album kind of runs together for me, even though I enjoy it when I'm actively paying attention to it. There's nothing bad here, but nothing great either, which I think is fine for what this band is going for as the singles that are strong are very strong, but the rest of the album kind of falls behind. That's the risk you run when you put so much stock in choruses, where "Running Through the Fire", "Gates of Hell", "Cold Steel Lights", and "Kings of the Underworld" fall flat as they're either lacking in energy, ideas, or just don't hold up to their peers on the same album. There isn't a whole lot of variety on I Am The Weapon but at least "Beneath the Shadows" goes for a satisfying syncopated riff to break up the middle of the album.
3/5