Album Review: Street Tombs - Existence is Corruption

This’ll be pretty quick.  Let’s not try to complicate this and make Street Tombs’ new album Existence Is Corruption something that it isn’t.

Have you ever enjoyed Goatwhore?  Or Venom?  Or Celtic Frost?  Or Darkthrone?  If you’re nodding your head vigorously (especially if your neck hurts while doing so,) you’ve come to the right place.

Listen, that might sound like an oversimplification, but really, Existence Is Corruption doesn’t need to be more than that.  There will always be a place in the crowded, gore-addled metal landscape for a band to remind us all of the days gone by in a fresh way, thumping out old-school death with a grimacing sneer and a bunch of stringy black hair and leather jackets.  It’s part of the collective musical DNA of the genre and appeals at the most primordial, instinctive level.

Especially when the artist crafting the tunes is so evidently good at it.  Street Tombs excels at knowing all the proper beats of how to write music in this vein, and the band is tight in their recitation.  It’s hard not to grin at the single “Deceptor,” which provides us with grim tones, yes, but also an accessible riff that’s easy to bop along to (as much as one can be said to ‘bop’ to music in this stripe.)  

Everywhere you turn, the record offers four-minute chunks of fun death metal, chugging along with broken-glass guitars and the usual growled missives about the futility of the human condition.  Real old-home-week kind of stuff, and that’s meant as a compliment. Best of all, unlike so many albums in this particular splinter, Existence is Corruption doesn’t sound like it was recorded in the back of a garbage truck.

(There is also, in all the guitar solos, just the barest hint of an East Bay Ray guitar tone, which sounds like it would be out of place, but works surprisingly well here.)

There is a…oneness…to the sound of the album.  Which is to say, in a blindfold test, it would be hard to identify one song from another, and the tone and pacing of the record never changes in a tangible fashion.  In a paradoxical way, that makes the record really fit for leaving on while doing office work (try it and see!) as it provides excellent, high-octane but not overbearing music to set your rhythm to.

As stated at the top though, don’t make this record something it doesn’t need to be.  Street Tombs knows what band they want to be.  They’ve recorded an(other) album that illustrates that point.  Relax and just enjoy the album for the simple joy of it.

Album Review: Lost Society - Hell Is A State Of Mind

Let this be an object lesson to everyone in the music sphere - artists, labels, editorialists, promoters, fans, everyone.  Gather ‘round, kids, it’s story time.

When Lost Society debuted in 2013 with Fast Loud Death, it was easy to see the band’s appeal - a throwback thrash band capable of putting out a lot of wattage, who understood the genre and its essential aspects.  The album was enjoyable for what it was, but mostly functioned as a promise of music to come.

The band followed that up with Terror Hungry the subsequent year, and it was much more of the same - good, solid, back-to-basics thrash.  Fun, fast, talented; but not revolutionary or genre-breaking in a significant way.  Lost Society was another thrash band living in the shadow of the legacy of Lazarus A.D, and the brief but stratospheric rise of Power Trip.

It was easy back then to tacitly nod and say ‘well, that’s what they are.’

Here at BGM, we talk a lot about the evolution of artists - how to ride the nearly impossible balance of sounding like yourself, but not being stale within that sound.  Few artists even attempt to make alterations mid-career, and the bands who have achieved it in the metal sphere are luminary and few - Metallica (for good or ill,) Iron Maiden, Anthrax (during the Bush era)...without wasting undo time ruminating on it, those are the ones who come to mind.

Lost Society has defied the odds.  Not just an evolution, but a complete re-invention.

And so we come to their new record, Hell Is A State of Mind, and for those who left the band behind as settled law after their initial run, make sure to come back and try them again.  Somewhere between 2014 and 2026, the band went back into the lab and cooked up an entirely new affect.  Their new brand is still metal, surely, but more melodic, more accessible, borrows more from rock, and does a superior job of creating a feeling than all their thrash grasping ever did.

To go back into their catalogue now is to see the steps - 2020’s self-released No Absolution, and then 2022’s If The Sky Came Down show the birth pangs of the re-invention, but what they really do is speak to the six-year (and probably more,) meandering, experimental journey to get to the point of this new record in 2026.

First point first - that is not to say that Lost Society is no longer a thrash band.  Halfway down the record is “Kill the Light,” and even with the big chorus and the brittle melody, Lost Society leaves no doubt in the chugging riff that this is still a band who can get down with a buzzsaw guitar and a headbanging anthem.  That’s only the first half, though - the back half of the tune is something else entirely - an anthemic power romp with keyboards, chorused vocals and something approaching stringed instruments.  Thrash, sure, but something indelibly more.

This kind of melding synthesis is present throughout Hell Is A State of Mind, including on what may be the album’s best cut. “Synthetic.”  The band pulls every string they can think of and weaves them together into something dramatic, heavy and dire.  It’s as unique and enjoyable an amalgam of sounds as ideas as any metal band has released in recent years.

That’s the key here - the blending of elements into a greater whole - and the title track, placed last on the record, is the culmination of all nine songs that have come before.  It’s a thrash version of something that would sound at home capping off a Lord of the Lost album, with all the gravitas and rafter-rocking that comes with that comparison.

Okay, there will be a camp out there that says “doesn’t this kinda sound like Avenged Sevenfold?”  And that’s not without merit.  The counter to that, though, is 1) is that so terrible? And 2) never mind the heavy use of synth orchestrals that A7X has never truly dipped their toe in, the undercurrent of true thrash chops that Lost Society brings to bear and builds this album on, gives it an edge, a grit that few other modern, melodic bands can readily compare to.

Not every song on the album is perfect, that goes practically without saying - but there’s an awful lot of admirable songcraft here, as it seems every second or third song makes the listener go ‘huh, didn’t see that coming.’ And when a band can do that, can make the listener guess at what’s next when they’re already more than a dozen years into their career, that’s cause for celebration.  Let that be the object lesson - never assume you know all that a band can be.

Album Review: Cold Steel - "Discipline and Punish"

It took a few runs to get this to open up, but once Cold Steel’s new full-length Discipline and Punish unraveled, there’s a lot here to like.  It just needs to be viewed through the proper lens.

The Tampa-based thrashers (are they thrashers?) are trying to fuse a few different brands of metal into a single mix, and at first it sounds messy, but ultimately that may be the point.  The album doesn’t take long to get there, either - album opener “No Escape” starts with a thunderous, Crowbar groove, and then moves into a second phase that is pure Pro-Pain, and then back again.  The big thumping riff is devilishly simple in construction, but that’s what makes it so effective.  We talk a lot here about the necessity of empty space in riffs, and this one leaves plenty of breathing room between thuds.

Then “Protocol” starts, and now we’ve moved into that modern thrash space that everyone has tried to emulate since Power Trip, with varying success (coincidence? Arthur Rizk produced this record, who also used to produce Power Trip.)  Cold Steel does a pretty good job of following the blueprint for what thrash needs to sound like to be captivating in the 21st century (Dead Heat take notice.)

It’s only a little father down in “Blacksmith of Damnation” that we start to see different influences creep into the proceedings.  The verses of this song are one thing, but it’s the first minute and the spaces in between where, if you listen right, you can hear a Fear Factory song (back when they were good,) trying to break out, just with a different production style.

The middle third of the album plods along without any particular comment.  Cold Steel doesn’t deviate a lot from the boilerplate in that section, and it drags a little, much like the middle third of Lazarus A.D’s classic The Onslaught, but without the same level of pure talent on display to carry the songs.

Don’t lose heart, though - stick with it for the last three tracks.  Beginning with “Fever Dreaming,” something magical happens, and for all the sound and fury of the album’s introductory third, it’s the ending flourish which makes it a special record.

“Fever Dreaming” is a…thrash…ballad?  None of those descriptors feel like they should be in the same sentence together, but it works.  The ragged vocals of Jose Menendez shouldn’t work in concert with the oversized, dramatic riffs and backing…keys, synth, chorus, whatever that is...but they do.  There’s a depth here that’s charming and infectious in its own way.

This is all followed by the thrash-rap (not a typo) “Smoking Mirrors,” which may secretly be the album’s best song.  It is, at worst, it’s most creative.  If fans of Alien Weaponry squint hard enough, they may see some of the same seeds in the way this song is constructed relative to the Māori band.  Again, should this work?  Who knows?  But it does, and it’s a lot of fun.

And we finish with “The Coldest Death,” which is back to form for the way most of the songs are written, but adds some end-of-album flourish with some of the lessons learned from “Fever Dreaming,” and a tingly guitar tone not entirely foreign to the sound of “Hallowed Be Thy Name,” a classic album closer.

If there is a fault of Discipline and Punish, it’s that 1) the title of the album is a little redundant, and 2) of all the influences and similarities in sound we’ve discussed above, the band isn’t quite as luminary at those same things as the names that were dropped.  What’s in Cold Steel’s favor, though, is that they are 1) very young and 2) the fact that they’ve blended those elements already speaks to the accomplishment of both this album, and future endeavors.  

Album Review: Dead Heat - "Process of Elimination"

 

Sometimes, you want something familiar.  That you know will satisfy, an old favorite.  You go to the Italian restaurant with every intention of expanding your palette with an exotic-tasting Tuscan or Sicilian dish, but in the end you order the chicken parmigiana.  You know it won’t let you down, and it tastes like comfort and cheese (and if it did let you down, anything else would have been much, much worse.)

That’s kind of how Dead Heat’s “Process of Elimination” feels.  You like thrash, and you need something that will stick to your ribs, so you grab some, already knowing what it tastes like.

The west coasters who comprise Dead Heat are following up their 2023 debut with this full-length record, and it’s more of the thrash you know and love.  There are scads of crunchy riffs and headbanging to be had, and some good, old-fashioned thrash breakdowns that make for easy mosh pit fodder. Take in the abounding solos, screaming vocals and lyrics that are firmly anti-establishment, and you have all the makings of a perfectly enjoyable thrash record, the like of which hasn’t really been released anywhere else yet this year.  

Now, the flip side to this is that “Process of Elimination” doesn’t feel very novel or particularly unique, although one doubts that was the point in the first place.  The album clearly follows the pattern of Power Trip’s classic Nightmare Logic, which has become rather the gold standard by which American thrash bands are judged since its release in 2017.  Process of Elimination doesn’t shine quite so brightly - there aren’t the single, earworm-y riffs of that celebrated album of metal, although Dead Heat’s “Enemy” certainly tries.  Dead Heat should also be given credit where it’s due - there’s a very solid bass sound that’s prominent on this record, in a genre that so often buries the bassist under a jagged pile of broken glass guitar.

Attentive readers may notice that they haven’t seen a lot of songs singled out in the discussion of this album, and that’s by design.  Apart from “Enemy,” the album’s best cut is its final one, “Hatred Bestowed,” which offers a little more patience in the build up and uses its longer duration (it’s four and a half minutes, so we’re not talking about “2112” here,) to explore some more dynamic constructions and sounds.  Other than those, though, the album washes over with a wave of similar songs that are all equally fine, and all kind of sound like each other.

The worst fault of Process of Elimination isn’t its own fault; it’s the fault of the time of its birth.  If this is the first thrash album a listener ever hears, it’s a marvelous record worthy of high praise.  

For the more experienced among us however, Dead Heat’s new record is something akin to a James Patterson novel, or some other form of so-called beach reading - it’s fun and you’ll enjoy it for what it is, but it’s not the kind of record that makes you go to bed thinking about its themes and complexity and uniqueness.

Album Review: Misfire - "Product of the Environment"

 

A little more than three years ago, we wrote about how Misfire, on the heels of their debut full-length “Sympathy for the Ignorant,” had risen from the shadows of the defunct Diamond Plate and was poised to succeed the unfortunate Power Trip as the vanguard of thrash in America.

There was a caveat to the band’s assumed dominance though.  It rested on the principle that Diamond Plate matured for their second album, and that if Misfire hoped to hold thrash’s crown, they would have to do the same, and smooth out some of the misgivings of their debut effort.

Now, there’s a caveat to the caveat - Misfire comes armed with a new vocalist in Tim Jensen, and as such the entire color the band has been altered, at least in a small way.  Which is all a needlessly long introduction to the band’s sophomore album “Product of the Environment,” and a complicated way to say that there’s a lot of layers to this onion.

We’re going to jump to the conclusion and work backwards - “Product of the Environment” certainly smooths out some of the rough edges of “Sympathy for the Ignorant,” but not always in a positive way.  The entire experience has been streamlined and hammered into sheets, which makes for an evenly consistent delivery, but not always an exciting one.  This new record is something of a thrash assembly line - eleven variants of verse, chorus, verse, chorus, solo, chorus.

That doesn’t mean that aren’t great moments.  The single “We Went Through Hell” is a personal tale, the kind of yarn that every listener can listen to and empathize with, as we’ve all been through some similar personal hell (so much so that I just used ‘yarn’ in a sentence.)  Plus, the riff is characteristic of some of the great thrash-y riffs of days gone by, in that it leaves room between the notes and phrases, letting the song breathe, rather than just throwing every rock at the window and seeing which one breaks through.

Skip all the way down to “Privacy,” and this is one of those songs were the crunchy guitar tone pays off in that old-school Megadeth way, as Tim Jensen, who even according to the band’s own press occasionally tells stories like Dave Mustaine, does just that, completing a construction that reminds of the way thrash was during its best days some forty years ago.  It’s great, and the singalong chorus even smacks a little of GWAR-style punk styling.

There are other fun parts that pop up here and there.  “Born to Die” has a great, head-nodding breakdown at the end, “End of an Age” has a cool staccato riff that bridges to the outro, and there are skillful and enjoyable solos from Kostadin Kostadinov from several other guests throughout the record.  

Still…there’s something missing here.  “Product of the Environment” has the blueprint of a thrash classic, but it’s as though the band followed the directions of the blueprint to the letter and didn’t add any flourishes.  There’s nothing here that makes one say “wow, this is Misfire!”  The album does a great job of replicating thrash from its halcyon days, making the listener remember Exodus or Slayer or Anthrax, but doesn’t draw attention back to itself once that initial job is done.

What we’re left with is an enjoyable, perfectly good thrash record from talented and experienced musicians.  It could have been great, though.  Did Misfire mature from their debut album?  Yes, this effort is a more professional, consistent experience.  It lost some of its youthful exuberance along the way, though.

Album Review: Warbringer - "Wrath and Ruin"

It’s hard to know what to think about Warbringer.  The band is rapidly closing in on twenty years as a going concern, but the road has been tumultuous and rocky.  If the band’s breakthrough effort was 2009’s “Waking Into Nightmares,” then the band has rotated ten different members through the lineup in the intervening time, including every position except for the singer.

Given all of that, Warbringer should be praised for their consistency.  All of their albums bristle with the same kind of modern thrash that seemed a lost art when the band debuted with “War Without End” in 2008. Which, as far as it concerns this new record “Wrath and Ruin,” means that it’s easy to make the editorially lazy argument that if you like Warbringer, you’ll like this album, and that the opposite is also true.

Yet, isn’t that damning with faint praise?  Unfortunately, what comes part and parcel with that is that “Waking Into Nightmares” remains the band’s gold standard, and none of their albums since that time have lived up to that high bar.  To listen to that instant classic again, is to hear both the shredding and creativity of guitarist John Laux, but also the extraordinary percussion of Nic Ritter (RIP,) who was without question the best drummer the band ever had, and that’s also the only album he’s on.

Absent those pieces has come a parade of capable and talented musicians, but the pieces are too uniformly emulsified now.  There’s the capable solo of “Neuromancer” on this new record, but overall, the songs are fine…but that’s what they are.  They don’t stand out from the Warbringer pre-existing music, and most of them don’t truly stand out from each other.

At the risk of copping-out by making an easy parallel, “Wrath and Ruin” feels something like Warbringer’s version of “...And Justice For All.”  There are only eight cuts, there are three over six minutes and another at five and a half, and the band is clearly putting pieces together and experimenting with new bridges and sections (“Through a Glass, Darkly” is on the border of black metal, for instance.) Tempo seems to be a big part of “Wrath and Ruin,” as the band tries their hand at different speeds in different sections, trying to find a comfort zone that feels novel and yet still recognizable as Warbringer.

The attempt is laudable, but nothing here truly catches hold - the riffs don’t bite, the drums don’t snap, and there’s no single moment or performance that makes the listener’s eyes (or ears) widen in admiration.  It’s more Warbringer, to be certain, and there’s nothing to be ashamed of about that, but that’s all it is.

Of course, historically, after “...And Justice For All” came the Black Album…

Top 11 Albums of the Year - D.M's List

As the years go by and I've been doing this list for some, oh, I don't know, decade and a half or whatever, it seems to me that each list may be increasingly influenced by where I am in my life - which is to say more accurately, what do I feel like hearing?  Which is to say, this comes with an admission: the list that follows may simply be my personal best albums list.  Okay, let me not insult you - it's obvious that this is my list, my name is on the damn thing.  What I mean is that this may be MY list - it may not be the best albums if we're judging on technical prowess or compositional acuity.  It may be simply a list of albums that I enjoyed the most this year.  And so be it.

Okay, a brief review of the rules:
- Must be an original studio composition in 2024
- No re-releases
- No Greatest Hits or compilations of any kind
- No live albums

Without further preamble - 

HONORABLE MENTION – While She Sleeps – Self Hell

I, for one, wasn’t sure rap metal would ever make a comeback.  Nor was I really sure that it should.  And maybe it still hasn’t.  But there’s a couple artists this year that tried to put a toe back in that formerly pristine but now dirtied and forgotten pool.  While She Sleeps was one of them. (Quick shout-out to Ihsahn’s self-titled album for narrowly missing out here.)

EP OF THE YEAR:  Alestorm – Voyage of the Dead Marauder EP

You know how some people are ‘small doses’ people?  I think Alestorm is a ‘small doses’ band for me.  And this was the perfect dose.  As ever with Alestorm, the comedy is acerbic and not for the faint of heart, but that does nothing to reduce its hilarity.  And the title track?  As legit a song as you can imagine.

11 – Reliqa – Secrets of the Future

Not all that dissimilar from While She Sleeps in concept, but this is the better execution.  The band is tight and in control and they know the sound they’re going for, even as it crosses several aesthetic and sonic boundaries.  

10 – Black Note Graffiti – Resist the Divide

Not a single song over 3:45, and punctuated by short, minimalist riffs.  There’s something about the mechanics of this album that’s kind of hypnotic.  Think Static-X, but dial way back on the gain and slow the tempo down to half speed.  But it’s similar in that the constructions are sparse, and I mean that as a compliment.  You can hear every part being played clearly, and no song overstays its welcome.  A better comparison – like a slightly   less-screamy, more deliberate Hellfreaks.

9 – Dungeon Crawl – Maze Controller

I kinda hate how much I like this album, because it is so unapologetically nerdy and based around late nights mainlining caffeine while you watch your graph-paper hero lose hit points because of a bad luck dice roll.  (And yes, I hate it because I’ve been there.)  When you strip that way, thought, there’s a really good, authentic thrash album underneath, and as I look back, I seem to have a place for that on my list every year (last year was Hellevate’s “The Purpose Is Cruelty” EP.)  The guitar work here is fun, the lyrics are appropriately absurd, the whole thing just feels right.

8 – Sundrifter – An Earlier Time

After Sundrifter released the very good “Visitations” back in whatever-the-hell year it was, I remember thinking to myself “damn, if those guys could just focus this a little and keep it within the margins, they’d really make something great.”  Well, now we have “An Earlier Time,” and it’s exactly the apex of Sundrifter could and should be.  It’s all the same cosmic wanderings of a wayward probe, but it’s snappier, more confident, and all around more listenable, while losing none of the signature fuzzy guitar tone.

7 – Dampf – No Angels Alive

Third year in a row.  Third year in a row that some electronic artist cracks my year end album list, by crossing over and blurring the line into metal.  Now, I’m giving myself a little grace here, because this is the second time that the artist has been Dampf, which means this is more than just a coincidence.  Dampf may not write the most technically challenging metal, but there is no question that there’s an understanding of what goes into composing a catchy hit.  There’s something about these songs that hooks you immediately.

6 – Powerwolf – Wake Up the Wicked

Color me a little surprised.  I’ve long been a Powerwolf partisan, but I freely admit that the band had a long run of making a great album followed by a mediocre one.  So imagine my shock when this album comes out comparatively on the heels of last year's “Interludium,” and still bangs with a new bunch of massive songs that only Powerwolf could have written.

5 – Powerman 5000 – Abandon Ship

Am I the only person in the world who has this as a top five album from 2024?  Probably.  And is some of that no doubt because of my personal nostalgia? Possibly.  But this is my list, so tough rocks.  I’m just going to come out and say it – PM5K will never again be the band that wrote “Tonight the Stars Revolt!” That age has passed.  But they also don’t have to be that band again.  After however many years wandering in the desert, the comeback that seemingly began with “Builders of the Future” some ten years ago is real and tangible and authentic.  And this album is a ton of fun.

4 – Dead Poet Society – Fission

One of the most unique bands going.  Minimalist beats, heavy rhythms, guitar tone not heard since Soundgarden’s “4th of July”…this is a heady mix of styles and colors, and it takes a steady hand to be able to balance all of those into music that’s even listenable, let alone good.  Extra props for “Hurt,” which is probably my Song of the Year…as someone who is also in a non-traditional career (yes, I have a job, and no, it’s not writing about music,) that tune hits close to home sometimes.

**It merits mention, there’s a gap here.  These albums are all great, but the next three were on a level all their own in 2024.**

3 – Transit Method – Othervoid

The sensibilities of Rush, but paired with the beats and rhythms of a punk band?  Hell yeah, sign me up for all of that.  It’s not every year that a band new to me crosses my (virtual) desk and absolutely pins my attention to the wall until I’ve heard the whole thing.  Can’t even remember who the last one would have been.  The Hawkins?  Red Eleven?  Doesn’t matter.  That’s how I felt listening to Transit Method.  And I hope you do, too.

2 – The Warning – Keep Me Fed

Ugh, I went back and forth on this a hundred and fifty times.  I even complained to my compatriot Chris about it.  I haven’t had this much trouble deciding between two albums for #1 since 2014, when I battled internally for a week over Red Eleven’s “Round II” and Destrage’s “Are You Kidding Me? No.” (I picked Red Eleven then, and I stand by it…about half the time.)  I can’t understand why the Warning haven’t conquered the world yet.  The talent, the songs, the aesthetic…this band has everything you want in a world-wide hero rock group.  It must only be the fallow period for rock fandom that we find ourselves in that prevents them from ascending.  Although, every time I see them, it’s in a slightly larger venue…In the meantime, this is certainly the album I spent the most time with this year, but it did ultimately fall short to…

1 – Combichrist – CMBCRST

Some years ago, Combichrist took flak from their fans for gradually moving away from a pure industrial style, incorporating more and more metal elements.  I personally think it’s the best decision the band ever made, as every album since that point (perhaps beginning with the DmC soundtrack?) has been better than the previous, culminating in this masterpiece of doom, gloom and as KMFDM coined the term, the ‘ultra-heavy beat.’  Some of the best riffs of the year were recorded for this album.  What puts it ahead of The Warning at #2?  The Warning, for all their greatness, worked with more professional songwriters.  And as Chris has so passionately explained on our very pages, there’s no sin in that, none at all.  But when you’re deciding between masterpieces, that extra little degree of authenticity for Combichrist matters.

Album Review: Metallica - "72 Seasons"

Editing seems to be a lost art.  When it comes to art in all its popular forms, more and more commonly referred to in our modern lexicon with the vulgar epithet ‘content,’ we seem to want more, without limit.  Creators are no longer hemmed in with reasonable constraint; instead they are allowed to tell their stories in whatever time they deem necessary.  To posit an example, Christopher Nolan was such a hot property coming off the success of “The Dark Knight” that no one dared take the editor’s scalpel to “Interstellar.”  Since then, feature films have increased in length in direct proportion to the fame of the director, with no particular end in the near future.  That’s not a sin in any way, merely a notable trend, as even the newest John Wick chapter is greater than two and a half hours in length, unheard of for an action movie (the two parts of ‘Kill Bill’ and ‘Red Cliff’ notwithstanding.)

Enter Metallica, a band whose pendulous history seems itself a series of wanderings worthy of a Homerian epic.  Each Metallica album is a story unto itself – if space aliens landed and demanded of you “tell us the complete story of Metallica in three albums or less,” you’d be unable to, because all of the band’s records could be subjected to a graduate-level case study (good or bad.)

With those two concepts as the backdrop, we come to Metallica’s new album “72 Seasons.”  Metallica is no stranger to the concept of artistic expression through the lens of a ponderously long thrash song.  In seriousness, you’ve no doubt listened to “…And Justice For All,” which is the poster child for meandering riffs and tangents that ultimately attempt to weave a tapestry that’s something other than a tangled mess.  You can probably sense where some of this article is heading.

“72 Seasons” exists at an extraordinarily novel crossroads.  It’s Metallica to be sure, living creatively unrestrained, as sharp and accessible and intuitive as they’ve ever been, and also transitioning back toward the style of rock ‘n’ metal which was the source of such acrimony among their fan base some twenty-five years ago.

The album kicks things off with the title track, which is a meaty listen at seven minutes, as so many cuts on the album are.  It’s never boring, though – the cut grabs immediate notice with a tension-building staccato opening that sounds like…Dick Dale’s “Misirlou”  If that sounds strange, that’s because it is, but that’s what it sounds like.  The song never quite channels that energy again, but the basic idea of a riff that constantly pistons throughout is pervasive for the duration.

We then move seamlessly into “Shadows Follow”…a little too seamlessly.  The next six minutes of the record feels like an extension of the first seven minutes, not a separate track in its own right.  This is where “72 Seasons” starts to get complicated.  At the risk of spoiling the rest of this article, the album is a good album, but it contains too many stretches that sound, for lack of a more erudite journalistic expression, same-y.  Inevitably, when there’s a lot of long songs that start to sound similar, an album treads into dangerous territory of fading interest.  

As mentioned above, we’ve heard this from the mighty Metallica before, but where this new effort deviates from the accepted curve is that there are whole stretches where Metallica doesn’t sound like Metallica.  Or at least, not any Metallica we’ve heard before.

Setting aside that James Hetfield’s characteristic rasp has receded somewhat, as he takes on a less aggressive affect for this record, listen to “Screaming Suicide” for a minute.  Catchy tune, hits a lot of the right tones, but does this honestly sound like a Metallica song?  The song is a banger to be sure, but it sounds like a southern rock trucking anthem more than anything else.

Later on, the single “Lux Æterna,” perhaps not coincidentally the shortest song on the record.  And it’s slick and tight and great, but it’s also akin to a B-side remix of Motörhead’s “Overkill,” right down to the false ending.  

It’s easy to get too caught up in the constricting conventions of genre definitions when such things are lazy and immaterial, but at this point in “72 Seasons,” it’s hard not to consider the question of whether this is a metal record or a rock record?  And what are the implications or inferences, if any, both for the album and the band depending on the answer?

There’s only song on the album that really doesn’t work at all, which is “Crown Of Barbed Wire” immediately following “Lux Æterna.”  The central riff is fine, but it never leads to anything, and the way James whines out the chorus through gritted teeth just doesn’t fit within the pocket of the song; the cadence is awkward at best.

Skipping past “Chasing Light,” which is generic, store-brand Metallica if ever there’s been, we get to “If Darkness Had A Son” which will tie all these points together.  This song is everything that is right and wrong with “72 Seasons.”  The riff is snappy and idiomatic for a band that’s given us some of the great metal riffs of the genre’s history.  The chorus is big and bombastic and the verses properly foreboding.  Kirk unleashes a signature Kirk solo.  But it’s six-and-a-half minutes, and it takes too damn long to make a decision about when to move between pieces.  It reminds of some of the cuts on Lazarus AD’s debut “The Onslaught” where there was fat that could have been trimmed but wasn’t.  Lazarus AD was guilty of being young, raw and undisciplined in their songwriting.  Metallica is perhaps guilty instead of simple hubris; the belief that listeners are willing to wait for them because of the name at the top of the album.

In so many ways, “72 Seasons” calls back to “Death Magnetic,” but pales just enough in imitation to remind that it is not “Death Magnetic.”  That prior album certainly had its healthy share of songs that got long in the tooth, but they never lost direction or purpose.  Metallica now seems to believe they can write like that all the time, attempting with some vanity to capture that lightning twice.  Near the end of this new effort, we are given the closest taste of that former album in “Room of Mirrors,” which might be the best song on the album that sounds like a Metallica song.  The pacing is right, the groove is right, the energy is high, even if the song doesn’t have that signature Metallica threat leering over it.  This is Metallica at their creative best, laying harmonies in the solo to give the listener the kind of artistic depth that we expect from a legend.

To read this back in conclusion, it probably seems like “72 Seasons” has few if any redeeming traits, which isn’t true at all.  Please don’t be mistaken, aside from “Crown of Barbed Wire,” every song on this record has a part or a piece that’s interesting.  This is Metallica, after all; the talent and know-how of the players involved ensures that the experience will never be boring.  “72 Seasons” is actually better than its cumbersome predecessor, “Hardwired…to Self-Destruct,” but it is flawed in that it drags on because Metallica refuses to edit themselves into smaller pieces.  This is the “Interstellar” to “Death Magnetic’s” “Dark Knight.”

Album Review: Overkill - "Scorched"

Twenty albums.  That’s a hell of a long time, and a hell of a lot of music composition, to say nothing of the sheer span of years.  It would seem impossible to conceive that any group of musicians would have enough content to span that period of elapsed life, let alone to deliver music that is idiomatically consistent both with the genre and the band.

And yet, here comes Overkill, the tireless wonders of the second stage of thrash, presenting their new album “Scorched” with a fresh face, but the same virility and biting rasp of all the albums that came before.

“Scorched” is, in short, the best we’ve heard the band since 2010’s excellent and transformative “Ironbound.”  Normally, there is a journalistic challenge in writing about a new effort from such an established property, because it’s hard to describe the band in a new way.  The too-common road is simply to say “if you like Overkill, you’ll like this album; if not, you won’t,” and moreover, even with the greatest of effort, it can be difficult to explain why one album is better than another than to say simply “it just is.”  

We told you that story to tell you this one; Overkill has presented us an album in “Scorched” that avoids all of those trappings by incorporating some new elements into the fold.

Now, when we say ‘new,’ that might be a slight misnomer.  It may be more appropriate to say that Overkill is expanding their efforts into uncharted territory for Overkill, which is similar, but not the same thing.  Overkill has always had in their back pocket the ability to slow down the tempo, as we so gratefully remember from 1989’s “Skullkrusher.”  It’s a card they seldom play, though, until we come to “Scorched,” which is, by and large, a more measured and deliberate effort than the customary smashing and banging for which Overkill is so beloved.

Dave Linsk has been underappreciated by the metal media at large for years, and he delivers again, especially as it relates to this change in tempo.  Look no further than the new album’s best offering, “Won’t Be Coming Back,” where Linsk very simply but effectively creates a deep dynamic with a fragile melodic lead line that belies a feeling of tension and unease.

“Scorched” is Overkill, surely, but also fitted with accoutrements from contemporaries like Metallica and those who followed in the aftermath of thrash like Pantera.  Shit, you can hear both of those things in “Fever”: the lofty openings of “Ride the Lightning” and the stutter-step of “Vulgar Display of Power” both ring true.

Yet there is plenty of meat on the bone for Overkill purists, most for the better.  If “The Surgeon” doesn’t positively scream with the signature of Overkill, then no song ever has.  D.D Verni’s bass sings, Blitz’s ground-glass voice chants out memorable lines, it all sounds so familiar in the best possible way.

There are, parenthetically, some Overkill callbacks perhaps best left behind; “Goin Home” cuts awfully close to “In Union We Stand,” which hasn’t seen the light of day in an Overkill conversation in thirty years, and was better off that way.

To try and loop all this together in summation, is there anything here we’ve never heard before?  No, but there’s plenty that Overkill hasn’t done before, and perhaps that’s the magic secret to a band’s longevity that Chris and I have spoken of so many times on these pages; do unto yourself as others have done similar but differently before you, or something like that.

The changes in pace throughout “Scorched” lend needed depth and creative space to a band that has always prided itself on professionalism and consistency of quality.  None of that changes with the introduction of new influences, nor should it – Overkill has more than enough inertia to bend trends to their will, rather than the opposite.

At the same time, on the other side of the country, the band’s most famous contemporary has also released an album…listening continues in earnest, but as the race develops, Overkill holds the crown for this album cycle.

Album Review: Necropanther - "Betrayal"

It’s taken a disproportionate amount of time to pen this review, in no small part because it’s been difficult to pin down what the real thoughts and reflections are about the album.  It was well within intent to have this done and dusted before the album’s release on March 3rd, and yet here we are, still without completely cogent ideas, but with enough to go on.

So, we’re just gonna start talking, and hopefully amidst the rambling sentiments there will be some themes that give a decent picture of what Necropanther’s “Betrayal” both is and isn’t.

For starters, this is thrash in the new millennium, borrowing heavily from death metal, both distant and recent, yet keeping the core of simple, accessible riffs that became the hallmark of thrash forty years ago.  

Stripping away the vocals from Necropanther, it’s easy to see a spiritual successor to the bright-but-brief phenomenon that was Power Trip.  Let’s drill down for a second into what is surely the album’s best song, “If You Can Count,” which ohbytheway, is representative of the climactic speech delivered by Cyrus in the most memorable scene in “The Warriors,” upon which the whole album is loosely based (and also upon the Greek myth that the film is in turn based on.)  Guitarist/vocalist Paul Anop noted that “Betrayal” is the first time he’s really allowed himself to stretch into solos, and the effect transforms Necropanther into something more than just another new age thrash/death band.  The solo he unleashes toward the end of the song is more rock than metal, more Van Halen than Slayer, and however brief it may be, in stands in stark juxtaposition to the rest of the song.  It serves as the perfect bridge into the twin guitar outro, which is again notable for its brevity.

Skipping ahead to “Revenants,” we encounter much of the same pattern.  Does anyone remember the 2010 album by As They Sleep, called “Dynasty”?  That was a middling record, but it was punctuated by one sublime, transcendent single, “Bedlam at the Nile.”  It took the better part of a week to figure out where the song construction of “Revenants” was familiar from, and finally there it was.  This new track by Necropanther inverts the formula, going with the grindy bit first, followed by the galloping riff, and then grinds back out, but the dance steps are similar.

As “Betrayal” proceeds it dips more and more into the death metal patterns of recent years, sounding at many points similar to Vaelmyst’s recent “Secrypts of the Egochasm.” We mention this only because the combination of these albums, and their combined utilization of melodic riffs and solos flayed out over the nailbed of frenetic drums, lends hope that perhaps the next wave of great American thrash/death is nigh.  Some years ago, it was believed that Lazarus AD might be the flagbearer for that march, and then Power Trip in their turn, but for reasons either confounding or heartbreaking, the wave crashed against the rocks and receded.  Hope springs eternal here.

“Betrayal” bears the hallmarks, intentional or accidental, of some other albums from relative yesteryear, like the aforementioned Lazarus AD’s “The Onslaught,” and even the barest hint of Prototype’s progressive metal “Catalyst.”  

And so it’s easy to recommend “Betrayal” as a satisfying and accomplished listen for all fans of either death or thrash, no matter the personal preferred stripe….and yet.

For all its accomplishment, both in technical merit and in so low a concept as simple enjoyability, there is a certain je ne sais quoi that holds the production back.  It’s almost as though the album is equal to the sum of its parts, no more and no less.  It is difficult to find the ‘ah-ha!’ moment that makes truly brilliant albums shine.

That said, and this in no way clears the muddied waters of this humble review, this review was published when it was simply so that it could be run reasonably near the album’s release.  Listening to “Betrayal” hasn’t stopped, and every subsequent pass yields some new find, some minor discovery, or at least paints the pictures in different relief.

There is no conclusion because there is not yet a firm conclusion.

Album Review: Misfire - Sympathy for the Ignorant

Every few years, there comes a band who says with confidence that they will take up the flag of thrash and carry it proudly into a new generation.  Since the turn of the millennium, multiple acts have wrested control away from their contemporaries and walked miles with the standard flying high – Warbringer, Lazarus A.D, Black Tide (okay, not all flying high,) and most recently Power Trip, just to name a few.  All of them have contributed to the thrash zeitgeist, but all have had to give up their grip on the genre for a variety of (often heart-breaking) reasons.

The flag seldom lay still for long, though.  Enter into the conversation, Misfire, a three-piece outfit based in Chicago who seems on their face to have ‘understood the assignment,’ as the kids are so fond of saying these days.

If there’s something that seems familiar about Misfire, your ears don’t deceive you – two-thirds of Misfire is made up of a band who used to vie for control of thrash, Diamond Plate.  Diamond Plate, for those who don’t recall, were part of a wave of bands that sought to usher in a youth movement in the American thrash scene and left us with two albums, the raw but respectable “Generation Why?” and the excellent, deep-grooved “Pulse,” before fading away into the recesses of memory.  In the aftermath, nine years after “Pulse” left us asking for a little more, we have the debut of Misfire, and the name of the band can’t help but strike of a little irony.

The record, “Sympathy for the Ignorant,” succeeds in that there is no feeling-out here – too often in thrash, we are presented with an artist who hasn’t quite worked out their sound yet, or who has embraced the formula of thrash without a complete understanding of why the constants in the pattern are what they are.  Conversely, from the opening strains of album starter “Fractured,” we see Misfire give us all the tricks and conventions we’re used to while displaying mastery of the form.  There is a catchy riff off the top, which introduces the tone while still leaving enough empty space for the impact of each musical phrase to mean something.  As the bass starts to reed through, the lead evolves, until eventually the engines are ignited, and now we’re off to the races.

The tone is important here.  Thrash has long been built on the proverbial buzzsaw of guitar, and while Misfire respects that, there’s more ingredients in the brew than a simple recitation of the old days when Kirk Hammett’s guitar sounded like it was made out of ground glass and aluminum foil.  Skip down to the middle of the album and “No Offense,” and while Misfire’s tone hasn’t changed, damned if this song doesn’t sound like it would have been at home on “Vulgar Display of Power.”  

That adaptability is the secret of “Sympathy for the Ignorant,” and evidence enough that Misfire has spent a lifetime studying, learning and applying lessons from the masters.  The average listener on the street might not be able to discern between thrash and groove metal, certainly not as Misfire portrays them here, but metal sommeliers will appreciate the manner in which Misfire has made a versatile blend.

While the album is easy to recommend for both thrash veterans who need a fix or the new generation of would-be thrash fans, there are some points worthy of discussion.  “Sympathy for the Ignorant” carries some dead weight.  For every mosh-ready ripper like “Red Flag” or breakdown-bearing bludgeon like “Death Trap,” there is a “He Said She Said,” an aimless banger that isn’t bad, but carries no real menace or sense of the moment.  It’s a common issue in thrash records, not at all limited to Misfire, where maintaining the speed and gravitas of the album through every track is a nigh-impossible task.  All the greats have suffered from it.

Additionally, “Sympathy for the Ignorant” doesn’t showcase the singular personality of many of the great thrash records that have come before.  Misfire doesn’t present the inherent dread of Slayer, the boisterous threat of Pantera, or even the inherent recklessness of a band like Pro-Pain; they are caught between these three things, without accentuating one of their own.  There is plenty of room for optimism, though – Diamond Plate’s debut was much the same and their sophomore effort fixed all of that.

The takeaway here is this: Misfire aims to be the next band to take up the flag for thrash and spearhead the genre for a new generation of fans.  That’s laudable in and of itself, and “Sympathy for the Ignorant,” while not perfect, is a truly worthy successor to the bands that have borne the weight this far.

Album Review: Death Angel - "The Evil Divide"

On this site we speak fairly frequently about the concept of nostalgia; what it is, what it means and whether it’s good or bad for music and culture as a whole.  This decade in metal has seen a surge in nostalgia like we’ve never seen before – a genre that was always so proud to break ground and embrace the punk ideal of leaving the past behind is suddenly turning back on itself as the first generations of fans come into their mid-life and want to embrace their youth again.  Whether or not this has been a good turn (and there are arguments to be made on both sides,) it is irrefutable that no band has benefitted more from the desire for yesteryear than Death Angel, who are more popular now than they’ve ever been.

The typical arc for a band resurrected by wistful memories of days gone by is that they can only continue for so long until people realize that there was a reason that band has been lost in the sands of time and they sink back into relative obscurity (AnvilAnvilAnvilAnvil.)  Death Angel is the rare exception that bucks the trend, reunited and releasing powerful new material that’s making the adoring masses regret ever forgetting the band’s impact in the first place.  With that as the backdrop, the band has released a new record, “The Evil Divide.”

Where many bands try to recreate their past magic through a modern lens, reinventing themselves for a new generation, Death Angel for this record has instead doubled down on what got them here.  The entire record is almost like a time capsule of the late eighties in thrash, when the genre ruled through a distinct combination of creativity and common sense.  “The Evil Divide” trades in chug riffs and highly artistic solos, using the junction of those roads to create the multiple phases of “Father of Lies,” one of the album’s no-nonsense thrash pounders.

For all of that though, the album’s best and most memorable track is “Lost,” an old-school thrash lighter-raiser that surges with power but is tempered by something resembling introspection.  What makes the cut work so well is the memorable riff – it’s the kind of thing that you may not actively notice at the time, but upon reflecting on the record later, it’s the first sound you can remember, and that usually coupled with a subconscious nod of approval.

As has long been the case with Death Angel, their music functions as an examination of the interplay between Rob Cavestany and Ted Aguilar on guitar.  The duo shines in this outing, able to craft variances in pace from mid-tempo to up-tempo without losing any sense of direction or purpose.  “It Can’t Be This” and “Hell to Pay” stand as opposite hallmarks of Death Angel’s deep understanding of the music they’re trying to make.

Mark Osegueda’s vocal performance, in the midst of all these other marvelous exhibitions, is going to be largely overlooked, which is a real shame, as he drives whole sections of this record in the same way that Tom Araya did for the best days of Slayer.  Osegueda is measured but sharp, crafting his voice in such a way to carry the narrative and tempo of the album with some menace, but not overpowering or distracting.  It’s true that he utilizes a very limited range, but Death Angel doesn’t require more than he can offer, nor does he attempt to step outside his capable role.

There’s really nothing bad to say about “The Evil Divide,” except perhaps that it doesn’t evolve the genre.  In some cases that’s a real detriment, but when a record is this well-crafted, and stands as perhaps the best pure thrash record in the last five or six years, it doesn’t need to be more than it is.  If you’re a thrash guy or girl and have been wandering through the quagmire wondering when your rescue ship will come, “The Evil Divide” is that record.  Worth an immediate acquisition….and then get your friends in on it, too.

Album Review: Suppressive Fire - "Bedlam"

Self-releasing an album is an arduous thing, fraught with concerns and complications and trials.  To release music with the backing and resources of a record label puts all the decision making in the lap of the user, like a UNIX operating system on full tilt.  There is no partner in the journey, and success or failure can be decided by as thin an immaterial a line as how good a huckster you may be.  So, the release of Suppressive Fire’s “Bedlam” implies a certain level of conviction in the resolve of the band.

The North Carolina three-piece mashup of death and thrash has put together their first full-length record, and it packs a lot into every square measure of traditional thrash pounding.  Each cut resonates with the kind of downbeat thump and galloping madness that so swept over the world of metal in the late eighties.  The subtle influence of death metal’s underpinnings means that “Bedlam” isn’t a carbon stock of the broken-glass crunch of thrash’s birth pangs from the early ‘80s, but rather a full-bodied recitation of the genre’s best days in the second half of that same decade.  To wit, “Bedlam” is less Exodus’ “Bonded By Blood” and more Testament’s “The New Order.”

Suppressive Fire does a lot of things right, beginning with the album’s general gritty feel.  Some of that is no doubt of product of the production capability that the band had at their disposal, which is perfectly adequate but not more than that, but some of it is certainly a product of the band’s desire to recreate the halcyon thrash experience.  There is grime in the corners of “The Hellwraith” and in the sludgy band saw whirling of the title track.  The creosote-soaked measures of thrash may turn off aural purists who like to hear every note, but the accumulated fuzz helps lend Suppressive Fire a good bit of authenticity.

Additionally, the band excels in short bursts of creative soloing and properly rhythmic riff-based mayhem.  The staccato throwback opening of “Thy Flesh Consumed” speaks to the artistry and aplomb of Joseph Bursey as he plies his understanding of the genre’s tenets and transitions smoothly into a wonderfully mosh-y riff.  While “Bedlam” doesn’t exactly leave a lot of open space to the imagination, it does have a pretty solid grip on the idea of pacing, engaging the listener while not burning them out.  “Pyrophoric Blood” and “Ironsights” both feature fantastic bridges and breakdowns, capable of withstanding even the highest level of thrash scrutiny.

Where “Bedlam” starts to stumble is in the connecting glue.  While the band shows great prowess in the composition of short bursts, “Bedlam” is almost better listened to as a series of brief thrash movements, rather than a collection of cohesive pieces.  The band tends to default to the same basic collection of sounds during the verses, and the vocal performance of Aaron Schmidt is fine, but not compelling enough to overcome the long stretches of boilerplate thrash that makes the listener shrug his or her shoulders and wait with varying patience for the next solo.  Several of the selections (“Bayonet Penetration,” for one,) are too long, running out of musical idea before the verses come to their conclusion.

So what we’re left with is an album that shows a ton of promise on the part of Suppressive Fire, but doesn’t deliver a complete listening experience.  The samples of this record’s best work are excellent and gratifying for any thrash fan, but the album as a whole has too many protracted periods of regression to the mean.  That said, Suppressive Fire has real talent, and with more experience and some refinement could easily challenge the best names in the modern genre.

Album Review: Annihilator - "Suicide Society"

Canadian entertainers have always had a foothold in America’s social lexicon, and as much Americans try to ignore it and simply absorb our brothers and sisters of the Great White North into our own patchwork cloth and claim them as our own, the artists themselves often remain true to their home country.  So, while American thrash came and went and came again, there persisted Jeff Waters’ Annihilator, the highest-selling Canadian metal act of all time, fiercely active all over the world since inception in 1984.  The release of “Suicide Society” marks the band’s (which is essentially just an epithet for Waters himself,) fifteenth studio record, and this one sees the central ideaman on every instrument except the percussion.

Contrary to their contemporaries, Annihilator has always done two things markedly different than their peers.  The first is that while all the great American thrash bands were content to either take on issues of nuclear war and social plague, Annihilator has always been more on the street-level view of societal analysis.  Second, Annihilator has endured a thousand lineup changes and a hundred different paradigm shifts in public taste but through fifteen studio records remains firmly rooted in the genre they started in.  To pick up “Suicide Society” in 2015 isn’t really worlds apart from listening to 1994’s standout “King of the Kill.”  Waters remains completely committed to being a professional musician in his chosen genre, and there’s a lot of worse things than that.

Also, Annihilator has always had the best guitar tone of any thrash band going.  Waters has mastered a sound that is both deep and sharp, an inherent thick hum that still makes each note stand out of its own volition.  For over thirty years this tone has persisted and has always been one of the most enjoyable aspects of Annihilator as a whole.  A good guitar tone cannot go underrated – Eddie Van Halen is as much synonymous with ‘the brown sound’ as he with his actual artistry and Boston sold an awful lot of their first record in part because of the clarion allure of Tom Scholz’s sound.  So to it is with Waters and Annihilator.

“My Revenge” is the second song on the album, but the first that really stands up and impresses.  This is thrash as it was always meant to be: fast with a buzzsaw churn, but still intelligent and highly accessible.  The song gallops along without reservation, blazing along with staccato riffs and bitten-off lyrics.  A cynic would suggest that part of the song’s strength is that the primary riff is nearly a copy of Metallica’s “Damage, Inc,” but since they’re both good songs, is there a problem here?  We already live in a world where “Four Horsemen” and Megadeth’s “Mechanix” are admitted copies, so give this a pass.

Another staple of Annihilator has always been Waters’ versatility within his own genre, finding the wiggle room to do different things within the same basic framework.  As such, we have the big bass shamble of “Snap” quickly turned around by the frenetic verses and dramatic chorus of the excellent “Creepin’ Again.” So immediately the listener is presented with a veritable buffet of selections, and allowed to choose whatever style suits his or her personal taste best.

That’s pretty much the theme of “Suicide Society” all the way through, highlighted in the second half by the jumpy and pounding “Break, Enter,” reportedly a song written by Waters chasing down some people who broke into his home (hence the street-level view.)  Okay, does this record sound so different from the other fourteen Annihilator records?  Probably not, but as we’ve discussed before, that’s not necessarily bad if you’re the best or only person doing what you’re doing, and in terms of traditional thrash in the original sense, Annihilator might just be the last man standing.

So that’s it, then.  “Suicide Society” might not be revolutionary, but it is damn fun to listen to, and, this is important, doesn’t feel stuck in the past like so many other veteran metal bands do.  Waters acquits himself with aplomb, and the album is better for it.  Fans will love it, and if you haven’t picked up one of their albums in a while, re-acquaint yourself using this one.  It’s a good ride.