Review by Sonny for Parkcrest - ...And That Blue Will Turn to Red (2019)

I know shamefully little about Chile other than it is very long, has a lot of mountains and is home to the world's driest desert, The Atacama, where there are many space observatories. The other thing I know is that the Chilean thrash scene is one of the more vital and vibrant iterations of the genre in these early decades of the 21st century. Bands like Demoniac, Critical Defiance and Ripper are but the tip of the Chilean iceberg and Parkcrest are another extremely talented bunch of thrashers. It does seem like quite a tight scene however, with Parkcrest guitarist Diego Armijo and drummer Nicolás Villanueva also playing in Ripper and vocalist/guitarist Javier Salgado playing in Critical Defiance and Hellish amongst several others. Formed in 2011, Parkcrest didn't release their first album until 2016's Hallucinative Minds hit the metaphorical Bandcamp shelves. Whilst being an energetic and raw album, Hallucinative Minds is far from the finished product, but did show some promise. So did the follow up, ...And That Blue Will Turn to Red deliver on that promise? Well, I would have to say that, by and large, yes it has and it is a massive leap forward when compared to the debut.

The first difference is that the production this time round is much improved from the debut and sounds powerful, yet has an impressive clarity that allows all the band member's contributions to distinctly be heard. The rhythm section of bassist Cristoffer Pinto and Villanueva are the particular benefactors of this improvement in production values. Pinto's bass throbs along, providing a super-solid foundation from which the others can weave their magic. Villanueva's drumming is possibly the biggest revelation for me on this record, it is furious yet controlled and is much more than just straightforward pummelling. His work here is reminiscent of Dave Lombardo and praise for a thrash metal drummer doesn't get much higher than that does it?

Of course, what we all turn to thrash metal for is the riffs isn't it and here Parkcrest certainly deliver, firing them off like they're going out of style from a seemingly inexhaustible supply. There may not be quite as many as on, say, Time Does Not Heal, but they certainly come thick and fast. Guitarist Javier Salgado doubles up as vocalist and his harsh, barking vocal style is particularly reminiscent o f Kreator's Mille Petrozza and, in fact, I have seen several plausible comparisons to Kreator, Slayer and early Sepultura and while they do take inspiration from these more aggressive purveyors of thrash, their sound is distinctly their own with a degree of technicality coupled with the aforementioned aggressiveness, this being a hallmark of the "Chilean sound" it would seem.

The songwriting is fantastic with several really great tracks on here, the opening duo of Impossible to Hide and Darkest Fear are a killer opening salvo and the instrumental Dwelling of the Moonlights may be my favourite thrash track since the early nineties. This is an album with a surfeit of riffs coupled with searing, meteoric soloing and a tempo that is unrelenting. I don't say this often but this is a modern thrash offering that is more than capable of holding it's own against all but the very best the genre has ever produced and Parkcrest comfortably sit in the vanguard of the latest thrash metal revitalisation.