Rexorcist's Reviews
After turning this album on, immediately after concluding One Hour by the Concrete Lake, I certainly wasn't expecting the verses to be orchestrated in NU METAL. But that didn't tell me this was gonna end up a nu metal album, just that this album was gonna end up wild and varied just like the previous efforts. Honestly, there's really no way to tell with these guys. But it's pretty obvious from the slow melodic structures and the nu metal influence that they were trying to appeal to the modern alternative crowd without being an alternative band. You can easily tell from the way our singer occasionally shouts in a very similar manner to Wayne Static. Despite this, post-metal also reigns pretty strong in the background, having a larger say than any other kind of influence in the album. This creates a strong sense of ballad-based serenity throughout a good chunk of it. These are good tracks with a strong sense of progession and some fine melodies, but in comparison to the wide range they went with on the debut and managed to balance out beautifully on the second, this seems a bit less inventive. For example, the first half of Her Voices is made up of this until it takes an immediate shift into speedy Arabic influence, as if they suddenly became The Tea Party. But there are songs that are practically entirely made up of the post-metal influence, like the titular closer. And unfortunately, the songs, while quite enjoyable, are a bit too similar too each other in moods, and the melodies are often a bit light. So in short, this was a GOOD album for me, but not brilliant.
82
Septicflesh has become my new favorite death metal band. They understand proper application of symphonic and neoclassical theatrics, and it all started with their debut, which was built for expressing. This is an album that switches from brutal death to gothic to death doom to symphonic black like it's absolutely nothing, and this kind of behavior is a major risk in the metal community as it can lead many to believe there's no focus. So does this behavior pan out?
The opening title track has heavier guitars rather than drums, which feels appropriate considering the song's sense of despair. It also showcase extremely sludgy vocals which remind you that you're listening to a genre called "death metal." Out next song is Pale Beauty of the Past, which switches between melodic gothic synth-oriented sadness and raw extremities with occasional black touches. It's a more "epic" track with a very different guitar style and a healthy progressive outlook on the constant changes that death metal songs go through. This one song gives you every area of Septicflesh's love of variety. It's almost like a Meat Loaf song. Track 3, Return to Carthage doesn't hesitate with brutality, going close to slam and grind levels while boasting black metal tremelos that may be backed up by a gothic chorus. There are even power solos that sound fresh out of an F-Zero soundtrack. Crescent Moon is a much slower ballad, going into death doom territory with the kind of post-metal emotion you'd expect from Solstafir. There's a simplistic side here that relies on the listener to be drowned in the reverb and melody in order for any theatrics to appear in the mind. This song might be overlong, but it's a fantastic experience.
Chasing the Chimera starts out with a slower approach as well, but is more reliant on the deeper and more evil aesthetics of death metal. There's also more room for melody, and this melody feels adventurous and intriguing, like something thrilling is about to happen to you in the real world. Because of the stylistic and tonal choices, it feels like a spiritual sequel and even epilogue to the previous epic track. The Underwater Garden continues this as well, leading me to hope for speed and aggression very soon. It carries much stronger gothic elements this time around, using gothic guitars and heavy synths the like of which may stem from Emperor's sophomore album, Anthems to the Welkin at Dusk. Thankfully, nearly two minutes in, there's a ferocious black metal section, leading me to believe the point of this seven-minute song is to be a magical journey into classical metal's various applications. In fact, the middle section is just mocking you when it switches from death metal speed to neoclassical pianos and then combines the bass guitars with gothic melody.
Behind the mask is a three-minute symphonic black album which feels like something right out of Emperor's debut, if not for Spiros Antoniou's impressively guttural voice. I definitely approve of this, having chosen Emperor as my favorite black metal band. The fact that these guys maintained the Emperor approach while being themselves is impressive, especially since they effortlessly go into a death metal jam for most of the third act without losing the grip, before going back into the symphonic black metal but heavier than before. Next comes a slow and heavy intro into Morpheus, which brings us some Therion violins to give us an ancient feel, a staple of several later albums. This gothic / symphonic death song is all about that vibe, and doesn't waste any of the magic from previous gothic touches shown on this debut. If the last track was Septicflesh's homage to Emperor, this is their homage to Therion, who used to be a death metal act before switching to symphonic metal, also with gothic tones. We end with Mythos, an epic that first dives right into Prince of Egypt territory and continues into a classical world of war, magic, loss and victory. Even though it's an entirely different genre, it keeps the best qualities of the album strong and healthy. Great ending.
It would be unfair to say that Septicflesh were still developing their style, because they made it clear that they were fully aware of what they wanted their image and their music to be. This album switches around more than a game of musical chairs. I suppose the band took a massive risk when writing several songs that switched from every point between soft gothica to black death aggression in a whimsical way, but this album's identity keeps this aspect magical, and the album might diversify, but it risks losing the magic in that second act when it was being slow-paced for too long. This is a bold debut challenging consistency by applying the right emotions and sensations to a plehora of metal genres, finally challenging the listener's dedication to the behavior of the band with a classical piece similarly composed to the most outrageous songs here. Not quite perfect, but a masterwork in metal.
Although I don't think I'll be joining the Revolution, I have to admit that I love punk. Right now the only punk genre I represent in a clan is crossover thrash, which is a problematic genre that rarely ever amazes me. Metalcore, IMO, is the superior genre thanks to the presence of more excellent bands. Unfortunately, the genre also gets very tiring thanks to the countless emulators of bands like Born of Osiris, so when someone in metalcore mixes it up, like Zao does with their own strong presence, I tend to feel a sigh of relief so powerful that it's almost like a weight is finally off my shoulders, as if finding creative metalcore has become a literal chore.
This is their most popular work: Where Blood and Fire Bring Rest. At first it starts off pretty typically, even though it's clear that mood and delivery is taken more seriously than punk energy, which is a sigh of relief. The same seems to be true even as it switches from calm acoustic james to slow punk screams in the beginning of the second song. Unsurprisingly, there are faint traces of proggieness and djent in the behavior of the riffage, but not enough to even warrant a sub-tag. This also feels like a smart decision to me because it's very tamed and used specifically for mood. In otherwords, this is the kind of metalcore album that keeps you on your toes, guessing what's going to happen next even as it rarely breaks its genre. There are quite a few instances of slow-paced growling and droning, which seems to me is an atmospheric choice that the band likes to take advantage of. In other words, speed is of little importance, even for a punk album. Very interesting choice, especially considering that there seems to be some sort of Neurosis influence.
But there's also some time taken for melody whether or not speed is a part of the picture. Listen to the openings of March and Ember, and then finish the songs to see where things go, even if certain sections may easily be dragged on too long. Another interesting choice the band made was writing some songs about hypocrisy in the churches, despite being a Christian band. They're tackling a wide range of themes involving personal struggles, even avoiding the preachy side of Christian lyricism. In other words, the band tried to make a Christian album that raw metalheads could relate to. Again, a smart move. But concerning the lyricism and quirky song structures, practically throwing pop structures in the trash, I'm wondering if each section symbolizes something, which would make this album more conceptual than advertised.
I can see why this is considered a metalcore classic. It's a SMART album. So overall, I kinda like this. Zao have gone far beyond what the Christian rock tag might've indicated for the music browser in terms of both style and quality. I can say, however, that I'd prefer a LITTLE more punk energy in certain sections, and that some sections whether fast or slow be shortened to maintain a further punk presence and less of a Neurosis one. Zao did something very artistic here, and they had their bumps but they were still very smart about this.
Kamelot's rocky history has practically come to a close with Karma, the album where they master all of the essentials of power metal and create something iconic. It becomes clear that Kamelot recognized their mistakes from the previous album yet again, despite the fact that there was only one mistake on the brilliant Fourth Legacy: it wasn't very heavy. Well after the intro, you're just plain blasted with heaviness. Kamelot improved their technique in that respct, but the music itself is just as brilliant as The Fourth Legacy, if not more so. And Kahn feels much more comfortable in the music he's singing for, so the lack of metal in his voice is adjust slightly to fit the melody so that he no longer has to struggle to go hand-in-hand with his softer voice in comparison to the vocal giants of metal. And the rest of Kamelot didn't even have to adjust their playing for that purpose at all, just the heaviness. Songs like "Wings of Despair" might feel standard, but the instrumentation makes up for that. The ONE flaw of the album is that the music still feels standard for power metal, and it's noticeable. But it's not enough to detract from the quality of the album and the noteworthy improvements the band went through. Kamelot's Karma is a perfect album for power metal bands to draw inspiration from.
There are a lot of bands I need to go through in order to get my top 100 right, many of which pertain to the slower genres I don't normally explore. Having said that, I have many fond memories of a long-term sludge binge I had throughout 2019 and 2020, and I've explored some brilliant artists in that time. One I haven't explored, however, is Hell, not because I'm Christian and I think I'll get possessed, but because it was also a doom and drone album, two genres I haven't ever obsessed over. So, the Hell debut it is.
But the album was quite good. Right from the opener, "Lethe," the music was crushing and monstrous, refusing to succumb to the lightning speed of typical metal and allowing the growls of the guitar to do all of the talking. Sometimes the sludgy music rang truer to Candlemass and sometimes it had the experimental vibes of Nadja I found myself almost hypnotized by its epic finale, "Maeror," which starts out with the almost industrial sounding "dark ambient" influences and continues on into an ever progressing wail of agony coming from the wild, and yet there's a musicality behind it much like an old record player delivering a requiem mass but drowned out by reverb. In this instance the album Soundtracks for the Blind by Swans came to mind.
Despite its heaviness and its authentic faithfulness to the many genres it combines, I feel that the album itself doesn't really do anything that unique for the veins of metal it tackles. Just that it's a good enough performance to recommend. But for anyone looking to get into the slower genres, the Hell but makes for a very good start. Chances are it may not amaze you, but it will likely entertain you if you like these genres. I know this album makes me happy that I decided to explore more drone metal. I'd say it's better thanthe last drone album I reviewed: Thaumogenesis by Nadja, and that was a pretty good album.
If you had read my previous review of the 105-minute long Esoteric album, The Maniacal Vale, you're probably familiar with my one criticism of the album: the length made it repetitive. So you'd probably think the five-star rating for Metamorphogenesis comes from the fact that it's only 40 minutes long, and is there shortest album, especially since repetition is a staple of funeral doom. Um, no. That honestly has so little to do with it that it's not even worth mentioning. It's true that Esoteric have a tendency to draw out their albums to an extent that harms the release itself. This has been true since their second album, The Pernicious Enigma, which was a one-trick pony in every single way. But the real glory of Metamorphosis comes from the fact that it's so jam-packed with new ideas, twists and musical influences that some have even described the album as "batshit insane." Considering what we typically get for doom metal, we need an album or two that gets batshit insane. I'd have loved for the album to be longer, but we still got 40 minutes of brilliance. It's no longer a repetitive shift from funeral doom to death doom to psychedelic doom. What we have hear is an eternally progressing 40-minute work that throws in random moments of drone metal, post-metal, straight-up death metal and more. And each piece of the puzzle delivers a loud blast of rage that's trying hard to fight its own melancholy but always succumbs like a normal human does. The best combination of musicianship and production that doom can have is the very reason this album exists: a production-oriented 40-minute epic of atmosphere and emotion, giving us something that Esoteric have never replicated.
If there's one thing I admire in music, it's a band out to set out they can do anything. We had a band like that for a couple of albums, before a nasty accident lead to a break-up" Acid Bath. And get this: they hate it when their music is online. But if you can pick it up or find it, I strongly suggest it because this is one of the most fun and eclectic sludge albums in the world.
Acid Bath's debut album is a legendary album for a mutlitude of reasons, the most important one being just how much this band is able to do with sludge metal. We have a few Melvins-style jammers that go back to the roots, slow doomy songs that make a man wanna get as high as possible, a couple of death metal songs and a folk song for crying out fucking loud, and some raw psychedelia to keep things quirky and fun. The same goes for our vocals which can go into raw screams, doomy growls and a more melodic alternative sound. But the best thing about this album is how unpredictable it is while still feeling like "Acid Bath." There isn't a moment wasted where the band doesn't put their personality into the music. This is all about a love of metal, and what can be achieved through it. Superstrong recommendation from my part.
At the time of Blind Guardian's conception, they were just another speed band trying to make it big in a German scene. There was no way in hell they could compete with Helloween, who defined the power metal sound. This isn't to say they were bad, but they couldn't hold one of their LOTR-scented candles to them or Running Wild. But thanks to them and Symphony X, the classical/symphonic influence was no longer a lyrical thing. Albeit, Symphony X got right to it with their debut, and Blind Guardian slowly built it up from Tales from the Twilight World. Just before the band went almost full-symphonic, there was that transition from speed to fantasy: Tales from the Twilight World, Somewhere Far Beyond, and one of their two most iconic albums: Imaginations from the Other Side.
Imaginations delivers all of the goods a true Blind Guardian fan should want from them: the speed, the symphony, the heaviness and the pop-culture poetics. The title track alone lets you know just how hard these guys will thrash without being an extreme band, but at the same time the heavy symphonic sound is exactly like something you'd expect from a "dark fantasy" film like The Dark Crystal. Truly epic without overdoing it. And Hansi Kursch, as a singer, absolutely refuses to control himself, which helps the heaviness a lot more than it hinders. And thankfully, not every song is just another excuse to be as heavy as possible at a 180 beat rhythm that power metal fans obsess over (thanks a lot, Rhapsody). There are moments of true poetic focus, such as the minstrelized "A Past and Future Secret" and the perfectly placed grand finale, "And the Story Ends." And melodically speaking (which is most important for the so-called subgenre "melodic power metal"), most of these songs fall into the best of Blind Guardians melodies, along with the majority of their near equal follow-up, Nightfall in Middle-Earth. But the edge this album has on Nightfall IS in fact edge itself. Nightfall pioneered the symphonic sound by sacrificing most of the speed edge, so it sets up a new era of Blind Guardian, forsaking the speed until the singles for 2022's The God Machine was released.
Imaginations provides the ultimate Blind Guardian experience, perfectly balancing the best of both worlds in the best of all ways. Key tracks like the title (my personal favorite power metal song), "Bright Eyes" and "The Script for My Requiem" may be among the best BG songs, but there is no such thing as filler on this masterpiece. With Imaginations from the Other Side, Blind Guardian proved that they could stand with the greats like Helloween and Running Wild, and that the brilliant Somewhere Far Beyond wasn't a one-time success or a fluke. This is the peak of power metal.
I believe this is the third time I've heard this album. I've given several Drudkh albums high marks as I was less experienced in atmo-black, and loved the production and the autumn vibes. I don't feel like I forced myself to enjoy them, but now that I've heard more than enough metal for a couple lifetimes, going back to this album, I can see why people like it... but not why people love it. The album's music is basically the equivalent of a musical white noise machine. There's excellent percussions that are light, speedy and creative, backing up every perfectly produced piece of atmosphere. Slow melodies can be hypnotic if you just want some slow melodies to send you into a state of total calm. Drudkh is one of those bands that can make perfect examples of total calm with extreme metal last 40 minutes on end. But as a guy who craves creativity, suffice it to say, while this album feels like it would be good for the brain and soul, nine minutes without changing pace, especially when all forty minutes of the album do this, doesn't necessarily say great things. The band is good at this one thing that they can do, but now I don't feel any need to go back to this ever again if I want something calming yet more inventive. Still, no fear factor, total atmosphere and an almost heavenly sound make this stand out amongst others who try the same thing, at least vibe and production-wise.
75
Leviathan is one of the forerunners of the more emotional brand of black metal. He has an almost unmatched ability to create sonic textures that leave you haunted, angry or crying. This is most artistically present in his side project, Lurker of Chalice. Not sure why he chose a different name, as I imagine that's not great marketing (maybe I'm naive about that), but the album still ended up being a staple in modern day atmo-black metal. I ignored it for a while because I didn't realize it was a Leviathan project until only a few months ago. Kickstarting my new List Challenge on Metal Academy, I figured this diversified work would be a good starting point, and it really was. Songs are drenched in atmosphere, flawless and even elegantly disturbing soundscapes that are more shift in atmospheres than compositional melodies. This is one of those albums that shouldn't, and I mean SHOULD NOT, build itself on melody, and I'm addicted to melody. There are moments that are doomy and sorrowful, noisy and disturbing, beautiful and slightly melodic, all organized to put you through an alternate would where pain lies on every road and you're smackdab in the intersection, where the forks in the road stab you and feed you to the wolves. There are a million different ways for the album to do this, and on most occasions it justifies absurd lengths, such as the ten minute This Blood Falls as Mortal Pt. 3. Ironically, I found the first song, Piercing Where They Might, to be a bit too repetitive, even at six minutes. The rest of the album is largely perfect. I had a feeling this would end up being my pick for the best Leviathan release, and I was right.
98
I'm not very well versed in Abigor, but since I'll be joining Metal Academy's North Clan soon, it's time for me to get started on a North List Challenge. But first, before I handle the 2nd Decade Challenge, I'll celebrate with some classic black metal from Abigor. I'm familiar with their debut album and thought it was quite good, but nothing special. This is special, in a million ways. There's a cinematic approach which allows the band to maximize their abilities. Flawless production and mixing allows the full extent of their black metal prowess to bleed through like a big gash in the gut. Not only is the balance between black metal speed and proper compositions perfected, allowing the band to constantly surprise every half a minute without breaking the essence of any song or the album itself, but the crystal production allows that second layer in the background to be heard quietly but clearly. It would be nice to see them diversify their ideas more, but at least we have some brilliant playing and clever layering to back it all up. To be honest, the first couple songs astounded me, but it felt less original as it went along. Still, I'm happy to get through yet another classic in the traditional black metal scene, and I'll definitely check out more Abigor albums later on.
93
I've been very busy with metal today. And I am two albums away from completing my third List Challenge on Metal Academy: it all ends with Razor's Violent Restitution. Now the first two Razor albums (heard them both with a replay of The Years of Decay in between) were good thrash exercises with properly noisy production, but neither one was able to impress me on the technical side other than featuring the band being self-aware enough not to go into overdone six-to-eight-minute territory. So they were pretty good, but that's about it. This album's different. The three-minute intro makes a point of going the extra mile in aggression while giving us some much weirder solos and more unpredictability by going even faster than ever. When they pull the buzzsaw out, it might as well be replacing the guitarists and you'd barely notice. That kind of revelation gave me a similar feeling as Todd Rundgren's motorcycle-style guitar solo in Bat Out of Hell. That same song, named Taste the Floor, boasts a number of wild decisions and twists in its two-minute runtime. That's the album these guys made. Of course, since many of these songs are between 2 and 3 minutes, it's safe to assume that many of these songs have the same basic goal: be a buzzsaw, a hyperactive and indomitable exercise in the thrash energy and production that defined them. Rarely does the album take any time to slow down, with the best example being Edge of the Razor, the longest track on the album (4 minutes 15 seconds). But a dozen songs of the same formula can still get tiring, so by the end, it becomes obvious that this album should never even have been 40 minutes.
So this is easily the most fun Razor album out of the three I've heard, and like many other thrash albums, the reason for its status as an essential is because it manages to be so freakin' heavily and pull it off. But there's not a lot of originality among the excitement and riffs, so that's enough to knock off a full star from a perfect rating for me.
80
Overkill's always been a fun band before anything else, and back when I was first exploring the thrash scene many years ago as a total noob to metal, these guys were one of the major players. But I rarely return to their albums now because of so many other ventures and the fear that I was neglecting other genres for metal, just like when I neglected too many other movie genres for horror. So now that I'm back on metal for the time being, this is the perfect time to go over this.
Now once again, these guys are fun, a lot of fun. Because they focus so much on songwriting and twists and turns each song, it's easy to see why this album became a staple for the band and the thrash fans. The production is their clearest so far. They've earned it after an impressive catalogue beforehand. Of course, it started out with a couple of little problems, despite being a lot of fun. First of all, the album's all about shifting places, but song of these songs are sharing some of the same ideas and twists. It doesn't help that they share the same tempo as well. Nothing super-surprising happens until the guitar solo to Nothing to Die for. As well, despite perfectly clear production, this also makes the album feel a little empty in the background, like the album's missing another layer that should never have been neglected or removed. This also allows for some songs to become overlong. I mean, 56 minutes can easily be too much in a genre where one of the four leading icon albums of said scene is literally half that length. And I'm talking about Reign in Blood, with the others being Ride the Lightning, Master of Puppets and Rust in Peace (forget Anthrax for me, will ya?)
But the album has a good deal of creativity and shows much more effort in this vein than with previous works, even if I may call those previous works better for doing a much more impressive job with the elements they had than this album does. The Sabbathian rhythm to Playing With Spiders was totally unexpected but very much apprciated. Hell, the singer's iconic voice is just PERFECT for this. He's basically a thrash variant to Bon Scott, but a better singer overall, so pairing this with doom metal was a good move. On top of which, how often do we even get thrash bands that venture into doom metal? Can we just take a moment appreciate the fact that an iconic thrash band with an already good set of albums decided to take this turn and pull it off?
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Thank you for enjoying that moment with me.
This might not be their most well-fleshed out album, but it's good to see that they were trying out some new tricks. Overkill rarely ever does a bad album because they always have spirit and the willingness to branch out behind them, and ironically, The Years of Decay seems to be the perfect album to fully describe their personality.
88
You'd think a leading influence in the world of crossover thrash would've lasted longere than 2 studio albums, especially considering how popular the combination of hardcore punk and thrash metal got in the thrash scene. Slayer and Voivod were both rocking the influence, even if they rarely ever reached the blatancy of S.O.D. Now this album is made up of nearly 20 similar songs, all going for the same basic goal: combine the two genres and complain about the things punk rockers complain about. This leaves little room for guitar solos and is mostly built for the explosion of quick songs built to cater to the youth growing tired of modern politics and authority. But there are a number of strengths that need to be considered here. First of all, for a thrash debut, the production is practically FLAWLESS. No demo-style noise which is extremely common for thrash debuts, not studio saturation of any kind. It's pure, simple punk, through and through. As well, these guys are excellent at the one thing they do: thrash punk traditions as hard as they can. And the lyrics might be to the point, but they embody the multiple facets of the punk spirit perfectly, even when they're going into the comedy of it all. This isn't a perfect album in terms of the art, but it's a perfectly punk album, so it's essential both punk and thrash.
86
With the band having expanded their sound into more artistic territory on their second album, Dreamweaver, further emphasis on that was placed on their third, which was ironically the last thing they ever produced. Now there seems to be a kind of alienation that the fans felt, which would explain a collective of negative reviews on the internet. This alienation likely stems from the further forays into standard heavy metal, ballads and prog metal. As well, there's a new vocalist with a stronger melodic voice rather than the raspy thrash voice everyone who knows the band is familiar with. Personally, I don't think this is much of a problem. This new singer seems to fit the more dramatic side of the music that the band was going for. On top of that, the majority of this music is actually pretty good, sometimes flat out banging. These guys really pushed themselves in the creativity department, but never once make the album feel inconsistent or messy. But be prepared for a very different kind of album, this more melodic, focused and versatile album just doesn't sound like the original Sabbat at all. Having said that, they pushed that specific sound as far as it could go without breaking new territory, so an album like this was gonna happen eventually.
73
Afte having seen some pretty positive reviews for English ban Sabbat's debut album, I was quite disappointed with how monotone and one-track-minded it got overtime. I was wondering if the fans were largely just attributed to genre fans as opposed to more explorative music buffs. Now I may be a thrash fan, but I demand ART. There's a noteworthy amount of that in this album, at least in comparison to the debut. The Clerical Conspiracy, the track following the intro, boasts an almost blackened level of heaviness and production in the riffs. Next even comes a soft folk track which lasts two minutes. This is what I'm talking about when I want an album to be less monotone. There's a little more creativity in the lyrics as well, on top of some prog metal aspects, which help justify this album's two eight-minute tracks, making them feel shorter than they really were, which in itself is a major strength since the band couldn't even justify the one eight-minute epic on their debut. However, while the album is certainly wilder, most of it still sounds the same, though much more impressively so. In fact, I couldn't even consider the last song before the one-minute outro, Mythistory, a proper send-off, because it sounded too much like other tracks, proggy aspects and all. So this is obviously a good effort with some great moments, but while it's more creative, it carries a couple of the same basic flaws as the first.
81
After checking out English thrash band Sabbat's two early demos, I went straight into the debut. I expected a fun but standard-sounding thrash band, as was the norm of the time, and for the most part. But I honestly have to say that I'm not terribly impressed with this overall. The writing quality, production quality and the overall atmosphere are a little better than the usual thrash debut album I came across for the thrash challenge on Metal Academy. Destruction was generic and underproduced for several albums, for example. This has PROPER production. Not perfect, but proper and largely clear with only a faint hint of noise factor. The album's overall vibe and essence is fun fodder for the thrash junkie. The technicality isn't that extreme, and largely done before, but it showcases all the skills that the demos showed off but were unfortunately tarnished by demo quality audio, and almost completely drowned by the first. The eight-minute epic, Horned Is the Hunter, pretty much drags through standard thrash behavior without any sense of branching out. Eventually it got so samey, monotone and standard that I was losing interest. I finished it, though. Overall, this debut is decent but passable.
67
One can't deny that there's a punk factor in thrash, as much as some purist metalheads might want to. Voivod, however, celebrated that fact by pumping it up. In some ways this is practically a crossover thrash album, and a major step forward for metal inventiveness. Maybe this is largely neglected because the album is so complex? Either way, this is the personality the band has chosen, and it actually helps a lot. Now their technical abilities are quite impressive, but it's the inclusion of the punk factor that keeps the album from degenerating into guitar wankery. While a little samey, the crossover aspects allow the band to display an incredibly unique personality for the time, and just allows the band to have a lot of fun. Hell, the singer Denis Belanger knows it, and boasts his hardcore punk style vocals proudly and loudly. And that's not all: they found a way to include the sci-fi experience here, the whole mechanical, cyberpunk, anti-dystopia vibes both lyrically and musically. As well, the punk factor gives it quite a bit of replay value as well. Now personally, I'd say the sameyness keeps this from a total five stars. But if you said this was your favorite thrash album, I most certainly would never, ever, blame you.
92
In comparison to KAT's debut album Metal and Hell, as well as their very slightly better live album 38 Minutes of Life, there are a number of notable improvements. While we still get some general bursts of tropes, such as the entire midsection of dziewczyna w cierniowej koronie, we see a number of more intriguing compositional chocies, such as the first and third acts of that same song. Tempos range out more, allowing the band to try to be artists. The band will even jump to some wonderfully weird, abrupt and unexpected surprises that never break the vibes. It also helps a lot that the voice of the singer, Roman Kostrzewski, has improved in a number of ways. He has a good high-pitched growl, a decent low growl and a decent actual singing voice. The practice he must've gone through, it's actually a bit inspiring. As well, the production is no longer the quality of a better demo or a cheap live album. This is totally clear on every level. BUt there is ONE downside to the stlyistic changes: the black metal aspects are severely neglected. Thnakfully, the album manages to keep a strong artistic flow, so I'm still quite satisfied with the direction they took.
91.5
There really isn't much I wanna say about this debut album except that it's pretty basic. Everything about this debut album is a product of its time. The production and melodic quality sound a bit like this one hair metal band that went nowhere: Nitro, which my stepfather told me about, considering them one of the worst bands ever. This album might have some genre appeal for metalheads because the sound is so nostalgic, but it's too easy to compare this fuzzy 150 BPM-central thrash album to so many better albums of its type. I would even go as far as to say those two crappy Nitro albums have a couple better guitar solos in them. Our singer isn't that great, either. He sounds like a bad, noisy knockoff of the singer from Metal Church. They pull off some decent tricks throughout the album, but overall this early speed metal release is too generic for my tastes. In fact, it can be so generic that I was even getting tired of it about halfway through.
I've been eagerly awaiting the ability to review this, because I've got some things I wanna get off my chest. Now, I often play Hallucinogen to drown out noise when I need it. It's one of my go-to albums for that purpose, especially for its dense, mind-warping and just nearly Lynchian psychedelia. So I was pretty happy that Ethereal Horizons was a return to the Hallucinogen sound. But as fun as it was, as epic in its approach and as beautifully produced as one would expect from an atmo-black metal band with this much experience, the psychedelia felt a bit nerfed in comparison. There were some proggier elements scattered around as well, as I often note in reviews for good albums, and many of these were the better parts. But as epic as they kept things, melodies and vibes were also a little typical. It was dreadfully easy to compare this negatively to Hallucinogen, although I acknowledged the strengths of the album as well and believe this will satisfy those who like the more sci-fi-oriented sound of this beautifully multi-faceted band. Hell, it's decisions like that which makes Blut Aus Nord my second favorite black metal band.
77
Well, I'm one demo and two albums in, and it's becoming quite apparent that Sadus is one of those bands that has to write the same album in order to stay noticed. And if I'm wrong, you certainly wouldn't know it from this sophomore effort, because Swallowed in Black sounds EXACTLY THE SAME as their debut, Illusions. Well, that's mostly true. I'm not sure, but something about the bass feels toned down, like it's slightly adjusted but managed to trigger no real effect. Because it sounds exactly the same, you may be pleased that the riffage and the heaviness are still on point. This is in fact, Sadus. But that can only justify so much. To me, rewriting the same album with very few new techniques is just being lazy. It's basically saying, "look at what we can STILL do because we're afraid to try anything new." And the few little things that are new, like the intro to Good Rid'nz, are typically so quickly disposed of that it actually kind of feels insulting. Thankfully, this doesn't always happen, with the midtro of Images being a good example of incorporating a somewhat slower tempo and a more intriguing yet monotone composition in the mix. But once again, it still finds its way back to the same generic thrashing. The album doesn't have a single song that shows the band focusing on a new direction until the six minute Arise which is the 10th out of 11 songs! As a result, I am much less excited by the riffs and whatnot that were done so well on the first album. They're fun for the thrash fan in the long run, but they feel mostly like empty shells, especially since the album's longer. That which I called "face-melting" when reviewing the debut seems less so. I know this is a thrash classic, is loved by thrash fans and is even bolded on Rateyourmusic, but I'm gonna be "bold" for a minute and say: I got more out of Kenny G's Duotones.
Even though Holy Terror remains an obscure band throughout most musical and even metal-based communities, the thrashers go crazy over their second and final album, and with excellent reason. There are a few noteworthy changes between the debut and the sophomore. First: the production is better. I find that a bit interesting, considering the lo-fi nature of the previous album's production aged well. However, it's not QUITE perfect, so it loses the acidic charm of lo-fi metal. Second: the album is much faster. The energy of the previous album was easily a saving grace considering that the songwriting didn't stand out, so this excess in energy helps this second piece to reach Kreator levels of energy. Thirdly, the songwriting is a bit more unpredictable, surprising and sometimes progressive or a little neoclassical. It seems that the group went through a major stylistic re-evaluation in order to make this album, and it worked out beautifully. The Immortal Wasteland has a more cinematic and storytelling presence to it than anything that came before, a bit like a power metal song or something by Manilla Road. In fact, that one song alone can symbolize how far they came since their enjoyable yet generic debut, but we get a three-part song immediately afterwards, almost a la Pink Floyd. The title track is an absolute pace-changer than challenges out idea of proper songwriting while boasting about the jam-packed nature of the intro while the last 2.5 minutes of manage an actual song that has some amazing riffs, but needs the vocalist's singing to raise the volume a bit. As well, it finally achieves a little sameyness by the end, which is unfortunate considering how surprising the album was.
So other than these three little gripes, this album would be flawless. This is one of the most fun, jamming and heavy thrash albums of the 80's, and I'll definitely check it out a second time.
97
Yet another classic built on speed and aggression, once again there's not much in the stylistic department that separates this album from many classic thrashers of that day and age. With their debut album, Sadus makes a point of raw, untamable, face-melting riffs that walked right out of the radioactive waste bucket. Some of the songs from their Death to Posers demo make it onto this album with clearer production, which has little-to-no reverb and no noise in the background, being crystal clear without shoving effects in your face. Major riffage and vulture shrieking, end all be all. Now how does the composition stack up against the others? The album is extraordinarily fast-paced, even for thrash, so the band is able to switch tempos like a possessed pocket knife releasing and sheathing its many tools. But because many of these songs are between 1:40 and 3:00, this often comes at the expense of the songs feeling fully structured, like it's just plain missing verses that somehow got left out by accident. In other words, this album is a raw exercise in metal energy rather than writing, so it manages to be quite a bit of fun for the thrash band and has aspects that are superbly well put together, but still manages to feel incomplete.
82
Holy Terror is a thrash band that largely goes unnoticed by the metal community because there are so many more classic bands in the scene, especially bands who did more than two albums. Those in the know may consider the band a thrash essential. With the debut that started a short-lived career, they already showed that they have some idea of what to do right. As is the case with most thrash albums of the time, the production is lo-fi in the vein of Ride the Lightning, which both helps and hinders, and aggression is almost purely the name of the game. There's an undeniable level of skill involved in the speed. These two elements have a sense of purity about them that makes it a perfect product of the time. Unfortunately, it also falls into the "generic" category as many bands of the time were trying to attempt these same basic thrash song structures, so the edge of this album can largely be attributed to... the edge. Most of these songs are basic yet energetic thrashers with an almost perfect noise and reverb factor. The first attempt at a slower balled happens five songs in, but because it's basically a two-parter, we go back to the typical stuff halfway through the song. So, while it's one of the thrashiest thrash metals you can find, it's also quite typically written and offers more energy than surprises.
77
Prepared for a fun album rather than a great one, I think I ended up getting both. This has plenty of thrashing, but above anything else, it's multiple kinds of fun, the spirited kind that defines the album like a Zappa one, rather than the general kind that tries to justify the existence of an otherwise undercooked movie, like Kung Pow. Now one thing that disappointed me about Agent Orange was the glaring inferiority of the band's attempts at straightforward heavy metal in comparison to their thrash works. But here on Better Off Dead, songs like their cover of Thin Lizzy's Cold Sweat prove that they finally got a grip on this. They're making fun, catchy songs of various kinds, leaving room for some raw thrash material such as Shellfire Defense and Bloodtrails. Thing is, in place of the occasional blackened influence of previous efforts, they included some more obvious attempts at melody, and this helps differentiate the album from previous efforts while still managing the Sodom spirit. I mean, hell, Shellfire Defense is Agent Orange material, and if you're a classic fan then you'll definitely get a big kick out of the title track. I even went back and listened to Shellfish again. Might be my favorite Sodom track up to this point; it left me wide-eyed, something that even the best Sodom albums haven't achieved yet. It also takes time to be a little weird more often than not. Gotta say I'm kinda lovin' that two-part intro to Bloodtrails. Though I WOULD say Healing Wounds is basically speed metal filler.
Bro, treading some reviews in an effort to grasp an inkling of why this album gets any kind of slack, I found that Sodom fans consider this a disjointed work in comparison to the classics. And to that, I say, "Check out Thembi and call me in the morning." If you ask me, this whole albums feels the way I've been asking it to feel, a largely consistent vibe that shows the band trying to expand. I came into this expecting anything from 60-80 / 100, but I'm not gonna lie, I'm in the rare came again, the Prometheus / Tauhid / Fulfillingness' First Finale / no better EDM than FSoL camp: this is better than Agent Orange. They're doing what they can to put out another real Sodom album while trying to expand their horizons, and they largely succeed. This album has tricks up its sleeve that I wished Agent Orange would even simply try to attempt.
At the time of writing this, I've given this album its highest rating on Metal Academy: 92/100 = 4.5 stars.
Having got through the EP's and albums before this one, including their first live album, I'm happy I'm finally checking this out. Their second album and second extended play showed a major upgrade in musical quality, both on a songwriting and heaviness factor, so I wasn't sure exactly what to expect except for a good time. The titular opener showcases a new ability to go from careful melodies to proper thrashing instantly while keeping the essence strong. Some may miss the fuzz factor that defined their blacker albums, but the clearer production gives them a chance to really show off their thrashing abilities, especially in regards to their guitarists. We also get some more excellent drumming from the always wonderful drummer, Chris Witchhunter, who's consistently been my favorite member. Hell, even Tired and Red is able to showcase just how far they're willing to take thrash by going from the blackened riffs to a softer ballad solo to some easier, chiller thrashing akin to Jump in the Fire. This is the most any Sodom song had done so far. If you're a fan of the really early Sodom stuff, then you might get a huge kick out of Incest (I want you to pay very close attention to the capital I). Its first half is entirely made up of the extra-strength muscle rub that slathered the earlier blackened stuff, heavier than anything on Agent Orange thus far. The second half is slower and a little more "epic" in that vein, before ending with a return to the first verse's form, as expected. This first side ends with Remember the Fallen, which starts as more of a heavy metal song than thrash. I'll be honest, they obviously didn't learn how to make a great heavy metal track yet. It was alright, palatable, but had nothing really amazing about it. At least they gave heavy metal a shot.
Side B kicks off with Magic Dragon (no relation to Gloryhammer or Puff). The heavy metal intro and first verse carry on the heavy metal sound of the last track with a slight improvement in quality, but it only made me want the thrash to come back because there's a difference between "pretty good" and "great." Thankfully, the second act kicked off just like that. Nothing new but it had much more personality and ability. But I certainly don't want the album RELYING on the thrash. I'm an "expand your horizons" guy, so I was a bit disappointed that Exhibition Bout started out the same thrashy way we've been getting for the previous few releases. Thankully the song took a softer thrash route after the first minute, and it really wasn't that bad. It was catchy and operable, but it only lasted for the middle section. The saving grace upon returning to typical form was one of their best solos overtaking the third act, a grand one that makes this one of the best songs on the album. Track 7, Ausgebombt, is practically a crossover thrash song that retools the Sodom sound, and adds a little something to the album that honestly should've been done ages ago (Slayer were doing it pretty often), so it's nice to hear that. And finally, yet another grand thrash, Baptism of Fire, shoves the black metal influence and the Teutonic majesty in your face as it should.
So this wasn't the most diversified album, as expected being a Sodom album, but it was another upgrade in quality, albiet a small one from their sophomore release. This is one of the harder thrashers in the Teutonic scene based on what I've heard so far, and I can get behind it being a thrash classic. Still, give me Metallica any day.
90
So after three albums where doing the same thing over and over again began to pan out less and less, Bay Area thrashers Vio+Lence seemed to have decided that change was for the better. Except, they obviously didn't know how to change. It's a real shame, considering that they had so much potential. This third and final studio album takes a more radio-friendly approach to the compositions, which probably means they were looking for money. But in this effort to produce something the alt-rock fans would like, they made a fatal mistake: see, when Metallica sold out, they didn't pretend The Black Album was a thrash album. These guys still tried to pass of thrash as a heavily-radio genre without really thinking about what that meant. They simply just nerfed the heaviness and assumed the genre would fill in the blank. They barely bothered to compose, just to thrash. Not really creativity there. As well, what's the singer doing trying to actually sing without more practice first? I mean, these guys have never been the best, but in their efforts to become even more relevant, they ended up at their personal worst. The production is shotty, the vocals are bad, the heaviness is a knockoff of the knockoff second album, and it all gets in the way of the identity of the band. Even if they had the right to try something new, this is not how one should go about trying new things.
53
So the first one was a good one that had some great, if not almost perfect, things about it, but some major creative bumps. The most notable of these bumps was how most of these songs were pretty much doing the same thing, which meant creativity was at a low point. very little differentiation betweem tempo, vibe and emotion. Well, it still managed to be a highly spirited, thrashy and purely metallic experience. This album feels like a nerfed version of everything that made the debut so good. Everything's palatable. There's still a good chunk of the spirit there. Obviously, that hasn't left. But the riffs are only pretty good as opposed to the wonderfully wild astuff we got before. At first, the album's charm is cool, but it goes on that way for five of the eight tracks, tempo, vibe and everything, and the only thing that changes about track 6 is the tempo, and then we go RIGHT BACK TO THE SAME STUFF on track 7, and by that point it just gets old. It will appeal to thrash fans for its spirit, but otherwise, it's an insult to the majesty of what makes thrash so grandios, being nothing more than a Malt-O-Meal variant of a better cereal.
67
After hearing the band's two early demos, I still didn't have much of an inkling as to their true abilities because the recording quality, demo or not, was terrible for the first demo and slightly better for the second. With this one, they got a real producer to handle the sound quality, which maximizes everything they're capable of. Thing is, while these guys are still stylistically generic, not really standing out with a style of their own, theycan sure jam like fuck and play at Star Trek levels of warp speed. Much of the frontal work is done by later Machine Head guitarist Robb Flynn, who totally understand what thrash power and riffage needs to sound like. For the most part, the rest of the instrumentalists aren't really struggling to keep up with him at all. They match his power pretty easily, which is incredible considering that the single hiring of one different person would almost send this album toppling. Of course, that's as far as the instrumentation goes. Although this is a perfectly produced album with song great songwriting, I'm really not digging Sean Killian's vocals. Not only is he joining the chained-to-a-wall kink train of thinking shouting the same way through a whole album is somehow the coolest thing you can do, but it sounds like he's in the wrong genre. He sounds like he belongs in a power metal band or a Queensryche knockoff, like he's adjusting his voice for thrash to hide this and failing. As well, with half these songs sharing very similar tempos and practically all of them bearing the same vibe, they don't really push any boundaries beyond raw instrumentality. As well, some of the songs drag on much longer than they likely need to, largely because the album's mostly an exercize in showing off both instrumental and production techniques rather than an example of depth. So I think it's right that I give this a good rating for some incredible strengths, but from a broader perspective, it's not the most enlightening... just addictingly thrashy.
83
Not really a deathcore guy, not really a nu metal guy, so this "nu metalcore" that Wikipedia apparently has an article for doesn't really appeal to me beyond the fact that it's metal. I checked out Slaughter to Prevail for a coworker and I politely told him that it was better than most of the deathcore I've heard, which isn't really untrue. But it's only OK. I didn't really expect much of a change when I heard about the new album. But to be fair, each song had little tricks here and there that I appreciated. Good portions of each song were built on these little tricks basically being major focal points. Unfortunately, none of these aspects were really strong enough to differentiate this album from the vast majority of deathcore in the longrun. Basically, this album manages to be catchy and edgy enough to get by on its own, with little amounts of creativity making it better than all the other generic nu metal and deathcore albums, but not a groundbreaker by any definition.
61
Now we all know that Drudkh had a leading say in the development of nature-themed black metal. They were basically THE band for the job. They had a bit of a rocky road after their 2009 album Microcosmos, as the people say, but there seemed to be, ahem, light in the forest, during recent years. So while I came into 2025's Shadow Play with some good expectations, I remained aware that those expectations wouldn't be met. So while the album's getting great reviews, I have to say that they've once again become a passable and generic black metal band. This whole album is all about relying on, and drawing out, half of the basics they had already mastered in the 2000's from Forgotten Legends to Blood in Our Wells. The album's going for finely-tuned production above everything else, so black metal riffs and melodies come off as unoriginal. As well, the production doesn't always balance out the ambient backgrounds and the riffs in the foreground, occasionally coming off as muddily-handled despite the ambiance. I mean, Drudkh influenced so many bands that have done this album so many times that it's not a joke. Did you know, if you just check the RYM charts and filter it by year and with only black metal, you'll get 25 pages of 40 black metal albums? And 25 is the maximum they show in custom charts. That means every year, we get over 1000 black metal albums. These days, thanks to other nature-themed atmo-black bands like Panopticon and Ashenspire, I can guarantee you a good portion of those albums is nature-themed. That means Drudkh has gone from influencing a classic form of metal to producing the same tripe that their own imitators make every year, just with better studio production that sometimes gets in the way. What an overrated disappointment. Production will keep it tolerable throughout, but otherwise this is kinda bogus.
52
Seeing the RYM ratings between Deathrow's iconic Deception Ignored and their follow-up, Life Beyond, drop from 3.7 to 3.4, the latter of which is the same rating as their divisive debut, I was a little worried that the album would miss out on the key factors that made them such an icon in the thrash world in the first place. But I started to doubt those very doubts upon finishing that opening title track. If it proves anything, it's that Deathrow had not lost their sense of fun, or their ability to be technical. Of course, it should be said that this is a somewhat less technical album than Deception Ignored, and that's probably the reason it gets so much slack. But if they wanna have more fun and try to write a bunch of different types of songs again, then let them, because I was having a good deal of fun myself. This might not be a TECHNICAL album, but it sure is wild. The thing is, these tracks might share SOME similarities overtime, but they're really too different from each other to call it a monotonous album. Staying in the tech thrash constraints, it maximizes what the genre's capable of like South of Heaven did, even if the combination of rhythms, production and vocals doesn't meet that same greatness. Some tracks are edgy and a little groovy, some are wild and just plain fun, some are angry and even kinda evil, etc. Deathrow proves themselves to be artists three times in a row as far as I'm concerned.
91
Deathrow made some major improvements to their general sound between the thrashy but fuzzy debut, Riders of Doom and their more epic and glossy Raging Steel, but they still had some improvements to make. This is where they decided, "Let's go crazy, let's get nuts," and turned into a freakin' prog band. And boy did they rock prog in ways most thrash bands couldn't at the time. I mean, some of these ideas sound like they were basically being Chuck Schuldiner before Chuck Schuldiner turned his band Death into a tech band. And sometimes they just get thrown in your face. That randomized piano playing at the beginning of Triocton kinda smacked my brown around like "What the hell just happened?" And they prove again that they're quite good at layering guitar riffs together. Of course, this also means there's a little less of the Teutonic side of things, being a bit more melodic and wild much like And Justice for All or Rust in Peace. Hell, you know they nailed it when a nine-minute song like Narcotic manages to flood you with a barrage of consistent riffs and progression that never gets too wild for its own good or overstays its welcome, AND THEN FOLLOW IT WITH A SEVEN-MINUTE EPIC. This was a major winner for the band, yet another improvement and a damn good reason to check out thrash. This is the kind of album where the band proves they know how to both have fun with their chosen artform and treat it as an artform to grow and learn from.
92
Immediately after the intro, it becomes apparent that Deathrow had fixed the production problems that got in the way of their debut album's ability to entertain (most of the time). This is the kind of album where a band is basically showing off how much they've improved without overdoing it. Although the stay comfortably within the thrash vein for the most part (such as having our first song, Raging Steel, stay within the vein everyone's familiar with), not only does the speed metal come back, but we even get some real instances that feel more like epic storytelling rather than general thrash. The track Dragon's Blood alone should tell you that. This was also the chance to show off their progressive side, allowing songs to switch tempos at rapid speed, even to the point of flipping through channels. And unlike much of the six minute stuff from the last band I binged, Destruction, songs like The Thing Within are able to keep going. However, while its riffage stays great and its production fine, it DOES tend to get a bit traditional and samey by the end. Nevertheless, I'm very happy that Deathrow grew up and rwwrote themselves so much soonere than Destruction did.
88
The album starts with the instrumental Winds of Death, which is simple, epic, heavy, but not the most original. At one point, the intro sounded a lot like For Whom the Bell Tolls, which came out two years earlier. After the intro, it takes no time at all for the band to head right into the powerful thrash that defined the genre, crossover undertones, King Diamond screams and all. But it's already much more powerful and effective than any of the early works by Destruction, so this was a bit easier to enjoy. In fact, the solos in Riders of Doom worked wonders. It was obvious that this album had a much better idea of what thrash sounded like, even if the production's a little fuzzy for my liking. Although, this helps the tremolo-picking heavily present on Hell's Ascent, basically adding black metal to the mix. The riffs on this one are absolutely crazy. But it doesn't take long for the album to get back to standardly powerful thrashing without much else on their minds. In fact, some of the actual verses are pretty lame when it comes to writing, and sometimes all I could think of was when they were going to get to the solo. No metal album should be like that. So while this is extraordinarily heavy for thrash, even for the time, the riffs and the incredible power are enough to enjoy most of the album throughout while acknowledging the lack of thought put into art and writing, even though the longer songs at the end have a stronger sense of creativity.
76
Here it is, the major comeback for Destruction and their last testament to talent, as well as the end of my Destruction marathon. I walked barefoot into this, expecting either one of their best and most creative albums, or another overrated display of thrash simplicity with production and energy as the headliners. Maybe a little of both. But it didn't really start out that way. The intro was just a variation on things they had already done before, and the first two tracks, while well-played, sound like basic Destruction in the end. Now the balance between energy and speed was perfect, but I'd once again be disappointed if they didn't even bother to try and write something new. SOMETHING new, Bullets from Hell, went the speed metal route, and managed to keep itself up for the five-minute runtime with a pretty strong sense of fun. But at the point of track 7, Meet Your Destiny, I realized after so long, I was getting bored with Destruction. This is because the minor improvements in melody, production and heaviness overtime don't really change the fact that it's just another Destruction album, even though I would say this is one of the better ones in this format. I suppose it's even better than the whole classic three, but not by a grand extent. So, this is and isn't ending on a high note.
71.5
Well, it looks like longtime thrash act turned groove act Destruction learned their lesson. Two EP's and one album into the groove scene, and it was obvious to them that groove was just not what the classic Destruction fans wanted. They needed to get back to the pure Teutonic thrash that made them one of the big three in that scene. And this, the pure return to form named All Hell Breaks Loose was formed. Of course, I never thought the early sounds of Destruction were that clever, and thus, this return to form is just about as good as what we got before. In fact, it sounds so much the same that even the fans of this band's earlier works admit that, while the Destruction fanbase gave a big fat "thank you" to the group for doing so, it's not like this album was anything new either. This is largely due to the fact that the group got the classic members back together. It kind of reminds me of Metallica's shift from radio stuff back to thrash during the switch from alt-metal album St. Anger to Death Magnetic. I mean, yeah it sounds cool enough. In a way, the extra heaviness and better production values give it some form of an edge in this vein, but there's the originality department that needs to be considered. So while this is a much more fun album that what we've been getting before, and further proof of their ability to produce and mix well enough for their raw power, it's also pretty obvious that the raw power takes the helm while thick writing still needs some work. Thankfully, there are a COUPLE interesting tracks, like the more proggy World Domination of Pain, but that happens halfway through (again). But in the second half, the five-minute tracks tend to get overlong (again). So in other words, this is a Destruction album (again). So I'll put this in the same league as the first two albums.
68
Despite being in the Pit for my love of Metallica, can't say I'm very in tune with groove metal. I give it chances on and off, but have little interest in a deep exploration at this time. This is partially because so many classic thrash bands made the switch to at as quickly as the European prog giants of the 70's switched to AOR and pop rock, and the results were about the same: middling and generic. Of course, I can't deny that a part of me absolutely loves the album Invisible Touch by Genesis more than my technical rating states (which is already sitting pretty at 93). But how can I complete my Destruction marathon without getting through an album so bad it might as well be Lulu? It's a key part of their history just like Risk is for Megadeth, and I plan on stopping at their comeback album, The Antichrist. So, here we go.
Aside from a half-cocked album cover that looks less like a thrash album and more like a screenshot of a Monty Python animation with a quickly placed cheap font for a logo because "money's tight," I found it easy not to hate the album, shall we put it. Now I encourage change and variety so that a band can prove they're capable of many other things, thus potentially improving greatness by virtue of multiple talents. But how does this groove album stack up against the others? Well, with the groove aspect and slower tempos maintaining SOME of the thrash genre that defined them, this newfound love of the 90's sound fails to stand out. Catchiness is spotty and riffs are pretty done before. On top of which, it's pretty obvious how much of their previous identity they forsook for this new route. I'm sure if they had bothered to diversify their earliest albums more so that stuff like this feels a little more natural, this wouldn't have happened. I mean, the vast majority of these groove songs do more or less the same thing, which in itself is hardly a surprise considering that it's a Destruction album. There's a rare exeption in Brother of Cain which goes into some major thrash power. Otherwise, it hardly gets interesting at all, and mostly just worries about getting on 90's radio. So this really doesn't do Destruction, or the groove world, any favors. Having said that, it's still a bit better than those two groove EP's they did in the eight years between this album and their last, Cracked Brain, so it's not terrible, just not promising.
57
I guess I'll just have to give up on the idea of Teutonic thrash act Destruction going for the artistic route again for a few releases. I mean, this 1994 EPreally offers nothing new in anyway, shape or form save one tiny little insignificant detail: they decided to jump on the groove metal hype train, as if that would make their music any better. They were already devolving back into the generic thrash band that ironically made them a key figure of the small Teutonic thrash act before they started focusing on real songwriting with Mad Butcher. This groove metal album is a short little 21 minutes, so it doesn't have the disadvantage of overlength that even a 40 minute album like their previous venture, Cracked Brain, did. But now with the groove aspect so deeply implemented, they spend less time on rhythm and writing and more time on breakdowns and repetition just because they figured it to be the "cool thing." In other words, they sold out and lost their depth. The last track is the best one for being a bit weird and creepy, but it's still repetitive in this way even for three minutes. What an unbelievable disappointment...
48