Album Review: Rising Steel - Fight Them All

I say this as someone who was not old enough to pay any attention to such things when they were at their zenith; I don't get the appeal of thrash metal. When I listen to most of those bands and albums, I hear musicians ripping through tracks where the main, and sometimes only, appeal is the speed. It was not a scene filled with memorable riffs of the Iommi kind, nor vocalists who could write or sing catchy melodies. If you didn't get caught up in the rapid speed, which I never have, thrash is not the most interesting of music.

Rising Steel is a new band that is crossing traditional metal with thrash, which takes a hackneyed sound and blends it with one that doesn't bring much else to the table. Their music is fast, but that word is a description of type, not quality. I have seen the confusion between them far too often. Saying music is 'heavy' or 'fast' is not an indication it's any good.

In this case, Rising Steel is playing music that is fast, but it isn't particularly interesting music. Their riffs are of the chugging variety, which can be fun, but over the course of an entire album I desperately want to hear the guitars do something more melodic. The best guitar riffs can be hummed or sung, and Rising Steel is far from being able to do that. So if the music isn't giving us a hook, the vocals must do all that work, and like in most thrash-adjacent genres, there isn't much melody to be found there either.

These songs are simple, which is fine, but the ideas relied upon aren't strong enough to serve as the tent-poles of winning songs. Emmanuelson's voice is a bit rough, and he over-sings to the point where whatever melodies might be there get steamrolled by his metal posturing. The entirety of this record comes across like a band trying desperately to prove how metal they are, when being metal has nothing to do with that very act. The traditional metal and thrash they are building their sound from are, by today's standards, relatively soft. They don't need to try to amp things up even further, but they do, and that is what makes it all so tiresome.

Look, plenty of you will hear this and love it, because obviously there is a large number of people who love anything that is fast and heavy. I know I'm an outlier when it comes to what I enjoy out of these genres. If you just want to spend a while having a band play hard and fast, this will fit the bill. But I look for something more, something that shows more deft skill and songwriting that will endure, and Rising Steel doesn't give me anything there. This record is too one-note for that, too average to care much about.