Ken!

1. Us

Well, let’s start with the big one. We’ll be there. Yes, your favourite people in the whole wide world (shut up, we are) are going to set up camp, drink a few bottles of gin & go for a naked jog about the campsite. Probably the best thing you’ll see all weekend.

2. Forbidden

14 years ago, Forbidden dropped Green in our laps. Now, Brown might have been a more appropriate title so it was a pleasant surprise when 2010′s Omega Wave pissed on it from a considerable height. They could have done a Grave, chucked together some recycled riffs with less variation than the output of a particularly unambitious Breville sandwich maker. Bish, bash, bosh, 3/5, on with the groupies. Instead, Steve Smyth bringing an extra string to the mix & big Russ remembering he could shatter scrota with his highs, they reminded the world that a good reunion album doesn’t have to play it safe.

3. Primordial

Having just put out the best album of their career, we’ve got high hopes that Nemtheanga (Alan to his mates) & pals will make their UK open air debut one to remember. As long as we get Coffin Ships & Lain With The Wolf, I will do a celebratory jig.

4. Morbid Angel

This is going to go one of two ways. Either (and I’ll admit this is the less likely option), Evil D & chum(p)s will storm the stage to Immortal Rites before ripping everyone a new hole to piss from with Rapture. A blinding set of classics causes us to forget their recent effort & as they close with Where The Slime Live, everyone joins in a chant of “We forgive you!”. The other possibility is that they play the hour-long extended mix of Radikult as Vincent wipes his sweaty ringpiece on original vinyl pressings of Altars before stamping on them & kicking them into the crowd. There’s definitely no chance they will wobble from side to side with cold dead eyes & play an utterly pedestrian set featuring a couple tracks off the new album & a few hits. It just couldn’t happen….

5. Wintersun

The ironically titled Time has now been in production for longer than recorded history but their appearance at festivals around Europe hopefully means that Jari is approaching his majestic vision. That or his mum is sick of the smell of week old feces emanating from the basement. Mopped clean & shoved on stage, there’s exactly one new song in their current setlist so at this rate, we can expect Time in 2041. Unless the builders next-door start work again.

Check back soon for the imaginatively titled Five More Reasons Why You Should Be At Bloodstock which may or may not contain nude pictures of Dripback.

GWAR. Fucking GWAR

Panic Cell

My nigh-overwhelming feelings of excitement & glee turned to one of horror when I was met on arrival at the venue with news that Panic Cell would not be playing. It was with a heavy heart that I put my Luke Bell Collectible Pint Glass^TM & Luke Bell Collectible Codpiece^TM back in my Luke Bell Collectible Collectible Case^TM & lodged them safely in the cloak-room. Their time will come, Luke. I just know it. [Update : Panic Cell are splitting this weekend so their time won't come. Why, Luke, Why!?]

Clutch

In many ways, Clutch are a perfect distillation of rock today. Straightforward, bass-heavy rock & roll that’s perfect for fucking to (or would be if my advances weren’t rejected by every single member of the opposite sex). It’s just a shame they’ve been adopted by a crowd of checked shirts, trucker caps, fake glasses & self congratulating cuntery. I wouldn’t be surprised if it turned out most of them had bought their beards in Urban Fucking Outfitters. Never before have I wished more for a non-tragic, giant disco ball meet mosh pit accident in my life. Then again, maybe I’m just bitter.

Their back-to-basics approach is so at odds with GWAR’s that it’s hard not to question whether this line-up was put together just to get more heads through the door. Expect to see more of this as the audiences dry up & we struggle to fill the massive venues previous generations foolishly built. The 2012 Slayer & Placebo co-headline tour is already in the works.

Before anyone gets too excited Clutch did what Clutch do best & played some Clutch songs. Highlights, just for a change were 50,000 Unstoppable Watts, Elephant Riders & Neil Fallon’s almost too perfect facial hair. On the plus side, I’m almost certain I saw Tina Turner in the pit. A perfunctory set overshadowed massively by what was to follow.

GWAR

Judging GWAR on musical merit would make about as much sense as evaluating Jeff Becerra’s worth as a performer using his break dancing skills as a metric. That said, they have shown a dramatic improval technically on album so it’s a shame that it’s the muddy, indistinguishable mess they are notorious for that dribbles it’s way through the PA. Recent tracks & classics are pumped out in an indistinguishable noise soufflé but let’s not let that dampen our spirits. In fact, as you might have guessed, a good dampening was the reason most fans had left the house today. Opening to God Save The Queen, our beloved monarch took the stage & was promptly debreasted. As far as entrances go, it’s up there with the Wehrmacht’s trip to Poland in 1939. Although probably with a bit more blood.

A bizarre set-list combined hits with mid-album filler tracks no one has ever requested in the history of the universe. I can only assume it was compiled using a re-purposed National Lottery machine. Get Dale Winton to present it & I’d watch the shit out of it. Anyway, it’s GWAR; an exercise in spectacle. Dead animals are molested, monsters impaled & Lady Gaga gets used as a toilet.  A hurried encore of the ever-infectious Sick of You & the poncho-clad security are finally given the respite they’ve been waiting for. It’s not perfect, it’s probably not even good but none of it matters because there is only one GWAR & the world is going to be a drier, safer, more boring place when they finally hang up their prosthetic phalluses.

Cyvoid - Cyvoid EP

It’s a simple rule. Stick space in front of anything & it immediatley becomes cooler. Watch:

• Ship, pretty cool, Space ship, fucking cool.
• Lord, pretty cool, Space Lord, fucking cool.
• Balls, pretty handy, Spaceballs, fucking awful.
• Thrash, pretty cool, Space Thrash, I want to put my dick in it & make dirty little space babies.

Now, Cyvoid‘s line-up looks like someone trawled the gutters of Leeds on a Sunday morning for the first 5 unconscious musicians they could fine but they assure me it was slightly more intentional than that. With members from a fairly diverse collection of bands (The Plight, Send More Paramedics, Antares, End of Empires), it might come as a surprise that the end result is a such a cohesive, nuts-out thrashgasm.

Intro Revok features a dive bomb so long it would have Darrell Abbott shitting his coffin before giving way to the mid-tempo bass groove of Phenotype. Blade Runner-inspired Time To Die serves as an excellent demonstration of how to play a Kirk Hammett solo at 4 times the speed of light but it’s all over too quickly for me. I’m left with a good sized erection as they drop to half speed for a gang vocal-driven outro. Things are slowed down (slightly) for the chugging hardcore breakdown Idoru allowing them to explore Suicidal Tendencies‘ end of the crossover spectrum. Finally we are left sitting in the toxic feces, trashcan foetuses & dystopian nightmare visions of closer Landfill Gulag.

Clocking it at only 17 minutes, you are left begging for more. A cynic might accuse Cyvoid of being nothing more than SMP with a sci-fi fetish rather than a zombie one but that would miss out the thrashier aspect they bring to this filthy, crossover party. Whilst B’Hellmouth/Professor Oblivion‘s distinctive vocals don’t dissuade from this hypothesis, there is a solid foundation of Bay Area thrash that leaves the end result sounding like far more new intellectual property than a tribute. Inject some Killing Technology-era Voivod mental into that monster & you are looking into the eyes of the rectal bleed-inducing alternative to the sad, boring Exodus aping of the average thrash-revival 5 piece.

Bonded By Blood & Lazarus A.D.

Bonded By Blood

There’s something highly interesting about mosh pits. From the sweaty sense of homo-erotic comradeship to the primitive establishment of alpha-male status, they are a BBC nature documentary series on evolution waiting to happen. Even without the reassuring gravitas of a David Attenborough narration, the sight of 2 fat men butting against each other like a pair of goats and then repeatedly scuttling away to take another run up is almost hypnotic in its simplistic charm. It would obviously take a musical performance of jaw-dropping charisma and super-tight musicianship to draw attention away from the mesmerising circus freak show festivities in the crowd, and, for the most part, Bonded By Blood duly provide.

Now touring their second album, BBB are in the perfect position to create a set that is wall-to-wall thrashgasm without any filler whatsoever, delivering a nipple blasting set of extraordinarily rapid thrash metal that means I am forced to avert my gaze from the primitive grappling and soak in the fluid solos and savage riffs emanating from the group of seemingly pre-pubescent young boys on stage. Their set was evenly divided between the two albums, though the familiarity of Immortal Life, Feed The Beast and Psychotic Pulse means they are most warmly received by the baying, if a little sparse, crowd. The new material, particularly the awesome Prison Planet and shredful Prototype Death Machine shows that they are evolving their sound (ever so slightly) away from cartoonish new-wave thrash, though they return for a brief encore (can supporting bands do encores?) of the massively childish Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles before departing, safe in the knowledge that, cartoonish or not, they have just pre-emptively shat over Lazarus A.D.

Lazarus A.D.

Hitting the UK for the first time, Lazarus A.D. have found themselves set with an impossible task: try to keep up with the hyperactive Bonded By Blood for 24 dates around Europe. A single set was enough to leave this muscular, athletic (honest) reviewer panting like a Type 2 Diabetic after a waddle from his mobility scooter back to the KFC counter to ask for extra gravy. Unfortunately their latest effort, Black Rivers Flow, sees an increase in both the Southern Groove elements that set The Onslaught apart from it’s peers & a rather disappointing step into far more commercial territory. Anyway, tracks like Absolute Power & Last Breath still sound as fresh as they did in 07 but The Ultimate Sacrifice could have been a Trivium B-Side whilst Light A City could have fallen out of Bullet For My Valentine‘s big bag of mediocrity.

Much like those bands, the problem lies not in their ability but in their insistence to spoon feed us syrupy, mind-numbing choruses that should leave all but the simplest fans wondering how little respect the band have for our cerebral ability. A cynical, jaded mind might propose that Lazarus A.D. have realised the limitations of the thrash scene & set their sights on a far more lucrative market. This theory would certainly be backed up by the proliferation of  dodgy haircuts, Trivium shirts & foetus-faced individuals who’s bemused look suggested this may have been their first time out the womb, let alone first gig. If they want a piece of the commercially viable pie that BFMV, Machine Head & others currently dine on, that’s fine but I’m going to have to ask that they hand back their “Thrash Or Die” motto in exchange for something more suitable. I propose “Thrashin’ For The Cash In”.

The Haunted

Haunted By The Fact They Didn’t Use To Suck

What the fuck? Seriously. What the shitting fuck? Remember Made Me Do It? Thrashy death metal, frantic yet memorable guitar work, Marco Aro‘s powerful vocal delivery, metronome-tight drum work. Well, take that thought & bin it. Unseen kicks off with Never Better which would have been better placed in a Nu-Metal’s Worst Moments list than the back catalogue of a band with so much pedigree they make Triple H look like feral, mixed-breed runt. To be fair, I can’t remember listening to anything they’ve put out since One Kill Wonder. The fact that I have a couple of those interim albums suggests two things. Firstly, they were nowhere near as good as OKW & secondly, they were nowhere near as awful as Unseen.

No Ghost is more reminiscent of Clutch. Groove-laden, bluesy hard rock doesn’t suit Dolving. In fact, it doesn’t suit any of the band. What the fuck were they smoking when they wrote this shit? Seriously. I’m going to have to use the word seriously again because I’m deadly serious. What the fuck happened to The Haunted? Catch 22 is a bad pastiche of Deftones meets Faith No More. The Bjorlers are having an identity crisis. The progenitors of melodic death metal have realised that whilst they created one of the most distinctive sounds of the ninties, other shit was going down & now they want to have a go at it. Imagine Jonathan Davis having a crack at the Gothenburg sound, Kurt Cobain‘s gangsta rap album. The cringe factor is comparable.

The Skull sees Dolving‘s seminal death vocals being replaced with a poor Maynard James Kennan impression by a pre-pubescent child whilst The City is screamo to a level so bad, I am unaware of any reasonable comparisons. There is one good harmonic on Them. That’s it. The single positive point of this whole album lasts less than a second. There’s an argument that this is a progressive album. That it might be a bit hit & miss as they try out new ideas. Well, it’s all miss & it makes Unit 731′s idea of the word experimental seem reasonable & humane.

I’ve thought about this for over an hour now & I really can’t work it out. What was going through the heads of some of the greatest minds in melodic death metal when they thought the world needed an incoherent, second rate genre-mash of an album? Maybe they figured they’d get in on the ground floor of the inevitable groove/nu-metal revival. Yes, that’s the feeling of dread you’ve all had for the past 6 months. It’s coming back with vengeance & it’s going to eclipse deathcore, djent & screamo. If that was the plan, then I wish them best of the luck with the sea of 12 year old pussy they’ll soon be swimming in. As for me, I’m digging in for another 5 years of mediocrity, embarrassment & baggy jeans. I’ve got my Triptykon vinyl & a thermos full of Asda Smart-Price gin.

Do your blood pressure a favour, skip this irredeemably awful contribution to the world of music. R.I.P. The Haunted.

Evile Ones

Circle Of Tyrants

The questionable decision of putting Tyrants on 10 minutes after doors open meant that they began their set to an empty room, probably. I wouldn’t know, I was stuck behind a couple of junior Schrödingers who were trying to establish whether thrash was a subgenre of metal or not whilst their bags were searched for Glenns & books on quantum mechanics. Anyway, the second half of their set served as a timely reminder that they need get an album out. To a good majority of the crowd, these tracks are as well known as the headliners & the big sweaty man mess in the middle of room is indicative of their local hero status.

Mutant

Soo-pah-cum-poo-tah! Mutant‘s refusal to put out an album is a subject close to my heart. In fact, if this album doesn’t fly about the room dispensing blow jobs, shooting lasers & making pizza, I’m going to have a wee cry. And possibly a poop. Turbo Hyper Ultra Mega Power & The Rauncher are highlights of a face-melting set. Tighter than Mitch Lurker‘s jeans but nowhere near as atrociously, stab-inducingly shit, Mutant‘s live reputation is well deserved. A headline tour is both an inevitability &, much like a 15 year old girl, a source of way too much arousal to be legal.

Elimination

Amon Amarth want their riffs back.

Evile

Evile‘s meteoric rise to the top of the new thrash pile is nothing short of unprecedented & with that rise has come an unmeetable expectation that they are going to somehow overcome the limitations of heavy metal & reach a stadium filling, mid-ninties Metallica level. This is, of course, retarded. What Evile can do is pen a thrash anthem that’ll rip your balls off & force them violently up your anus. It is this proclivity that probably means we won’t see them selling out Hampden any time soon. It also means I’m not exaggerating when I say that Thrasher is the Toxic Waltz of this generation* &  there’s a very good reason why Ol was chosen as the guy to fill in for Destruction when Mike Sifringer had his hand kicked off.

The set serves to highlight the massive leaps Evile made in songwriting from Enter The Grave to Infected Nations. Whilst First Blood & ETG are very much straight-forward Exodus template plagiarism, A Plague To End All Plagues is the calling card of a technically brilliant, modern thrash outfit combining the old school influences of Puppets-era Metallica with a pioneering vision to carve out a sound of their own in a very stagnant genre. Closing with much missed bassist Mike Alexander’s Killer From The Deep, it’s a clear bookmark to the end of a turbulent, emotional chapter in the book of one of the most exciting bands in the UK at the moment.

* I have, at this point, been compelled by my own brain to remind you that every Black Talon song is the Toxic Waltz of this generation & the fact they weren’t main support on this tour was a gross oversight on the part of the organisers. These are facts.

Credit for the pictures goes to Emy “I’m not going to Leeds” McLeod.

Dan Gapen - Lazarus A.D.

Lazarus A.D. have just put out their second album, Black Rivers Flow on Metal Blade & they are about to hit the UK with Bonded By Blood for a double headline thrash feast. With that in mind, we caught up with guitarist & vocalist Dan Gapen to chat about the album, tour, J-Biebz & animal cruelty.

Leave The Hall: I know it’s only been out a few days but how has the reaction been to Black Rivers Flow so far?

Dan Gapen: We think it’s been great. Sure you are always going to get a few haters but fuck them. The fans have been great and we can’t wait to party with all of them.

LTH: Stylistically, there’s been a noticeable progression from The Onslaught. You’ve never played straight forward retro thrash but Black Rivers Flow is definitely much more accessible & commercial. Was this a conscious decision or just something that happened as you wrote it?

DG: Well it’s obviously an evolution. We grew as musicians, and we grew as a band. We knew we wanted to experiment in the vocal department, step up the solos, and really just write a more well thought out and heartfelt record and I think that’s what we did.

LTH: You’ve worked with James Murphy on both albums. What’s it like working with a legend? Do you ever just sit back & bask in his glory?

DG: We have never met James in person. We track the album at one studio and just send it to James so he can mix and master the record. James does a great job he is top notch.

LTH: You are coming over here for a tour with Bonded By Blood soon. Who’s been the most fun to tour with yet? Anyone you’d like to tour with?

DG: Best tour hands down was with Testament. That was a tour for the ages. We will tour with anyone we don’t care, we just want to play shows and tear the fucking roof off.

LTH: We love nothing more than a thrash ballad. What are your top 5 thrash ballads?

DG: Too many great thrash ballads to just name 5. Besides I don’t want to piss anyone off cuz I left them off my list.

LTH: There are definitely not enough inter-band feuds going on in metal at the moment. Are there any bands you’d like to have a feud with? We’ll see what we can sort out.

DG: We don’t have any band feuds going on at the moment. Maybe we can start a feud with Justin Bieber he just needs to fucking go away.

LTH: What’s the last gig you went to?

DG: Haven’t really been to any gigs we aren’t playing. It’s really hard to cut away when you are on tour all the time.

LTH: Who would win a fight between Gary Holt & Gordon Ramsay?

DG: I’d have to say Gary Holt would kick that ass. Ramsay looks like a pussy

LTH: And lastly, what’s the largest animal you reckon you could kick over a set of goalposts?

DG: Dude, I can’t kick a football through a goal post let alone some animal’s stink ass.

Lazarus A.D. & Bonded By Blood are hitting European shores next month.

• 09/03 – London, UK – O2 Academy 2
• 10/03 – Bristol, UK – Area 81
• 11/03 – Milton Keynes, UK – Crauford Arms
• 12/03 – Leeds, UK – The Well
• 13/03 – Glasgow, UK – Ivory Blacks
• 14/03 – Nottingham, UK – The Maze
• 15/03 – Southampton, UK – Joiners
• 16/03 – Norwich, UK – Metal Lust @ The Brickmakers

Lich King's Top 9 Albums Of 2010

Coming up with this list revealed a sad thing about me- I didn’t even listen to ten albums this year. I didn’t even check out the new Iron Maiden… after Dance of Death I didn’t have the heart to pop back in on my erstwhile favorite metal band and hear what they’re not doing. I tend to be pretty monogamous to the classics and down on what’s happening these days in metal, so it’s rare for me to even try something new. Couple that with my legendarily limited range of taste- I only like so much- and you’ve got a recipe for the most absent metal fan out there.

That said, Ewen’s a lovely chap and he’s asked me to list my top 10, so I guess I’ll put the nine albums I did hear in order.

9. Bonded By Blood – Exiled to Earth

No disrespect is intended to our friends in BBB by putting them last- I’ve always been (almost coldly) up front with them on that their style of music isn’t really to my taste. They’re beginning to go a more technical progressive speed route, and I’m over here in ExodusWorshipsburg. I admire what they’ve done, though, coming out with a thrash metal concept album about an alien occupation of earth. It’s cool stuff, and an example of the kind of nonlinear thinking we need as a subgenre.

8. Vindicator – The Antique Witcheries

I’m pals with these guys but I’ll be honest, there’s a much better album hiding here under a number of problems. The vocalist is clearly phoning it in, maybe after too many takes and a diminished urge to sound engaged. The sound is almost too clean and the crunch suffers for it. It’s a step away from the destructive sound on their split with Metal Witch, but it’s still a better album than what you’ll hear from most bands on the covers of metal magazines these days. Here’s hoping their next effort reflects what I know they’re capable of.

7. Razormaze – Miseries

The new wave of thrash metal is rightly criticized for being awash with clueless and styleless Slayer clones, wherein riffs and thrash costumes abound but originality is a hard thing to discover. Razormaze have one of the most distinct sounds in modern thrash. It’s best described as “what if you turned up the metal, speed and aggression in Skid Row’s Slave to the Grind?” I realize that doesn’t really tell you that much, but hey, listen for yourself… Miseries is a free download. razormaze.bandcamp.com

6. Witchaven – Terrorstorm

The only band with blackened influence that I can stand, Witchaven are the kings of the midtempo riff and this album’s got a lot to headbang to. Shortly into Dawn of the Unholy there’s a monstrous moment that will get any room banging. I take issue with a lot of what makes Witchaven Witchaven- most notably their insistence that using a photo of a murdered child as an album cover isn’t for shock value, it’s to educate you as to what’s going on in the world. Rolling my eyes that hard sours the experience a bit but ehh. The metal’s good.

5. Violator – Annihilation Process

There’s a feeling in music that I once heard described as “the ‘OH SHIT’ effect.” The song starts and the energy grabs you and takes you with it, almost against your will, and you exclaim “OH SHIT” from the sensation of all that desperate anxiety. Violator’s one of the best bands to evoke the OH SHIT effect since Vio-Lence, and the first minute of Poisoned by Ignorance hits you hard. Overall, though, the feeling is the same as their superior album Chemical Assault and the songwriting hasn’t developed. Each song seems tailored to evoke the same emotion- and very well- but an album needs at least a bit of diversity.

4. Lich King – World Gone Dead

That’s right, I put our album in my own top ten list and I placed it fourth. Eat me.

3. Overkill – Ironbound

This album would be first for me if not for a number of little confusions- why that acoustic bridge in the otherwise stellar Ironbound, why this lyrical theme, why that riff and so on. I’d be lying if I said these choices weren’t completely in keeping with Overkill’s writing style, but that’s why I’ve never quite understood them to the level I’d like. At any rate, this album’s incredibly strong and that’s why you’re seeing it at the top of so many top 10 lists this month.

2. Exodus – Exhibit B: The Human Condition

Exodus takes a lot of shit these days from the thrash body politic. The majority of it is aimed squarely at vocalist and professional scapegoat Rob Dukes, but it all comes down to the pissy sense of betrayal fans feel when a band doesn’t sound like it used to. Whine whine whine. The album isn’t exactly what I’d want from them but what a work ethic- they’re not displaying the tired feeling they did around Force of Habit, this is 1.3 hours of dense songwriting they were obviously very engaged in… in fact, most of the songs could stand to end about three minutes before they do. They’re almost showing too much passion for the songwriting. It doesn’t always pay off but it’s heavy, it’s worthwhile, it’s Exodus, it’s good.

1. Heathen – The Evolution of Chaos

Heathen makes the kind of riffs I want to hear more of. Barring the squidgy this-is-a-Thomas-Kinkade-level-of-corniness feeling I get during the spoken word segment of A Hero’s Welcome, the album is thick with my kind of metal. Heavy and speedy riffs, coexisting in harmony, the way nature intended.

Skeletonwitch - Bringers Of Death

Everything about the new Skeletonwitch video is fucking brilliant. They’ve got machine gun toting mascots chasing zombies in trucks. Furry fetishists will be wanking into their fluffy little paws for day. Enjoy!

Skeletonwitch

Annihilator - Total Annihilation

Those lovely folk over at Earache have put out a free, download-only compilation of tracks from Canadian thrash metal pioneers Annihilator, called TOTAL ANNIHILATION, in conjunction with Metal Hammer. Unfortunately it only covers the less brilliant part of their career but it’s Jeff Fucking Waters & it’s free so go get it!

Earache Records is releasing six classic albums from Annihilator‘s back-catalogue as part of the “Total Annihilation” campaign, and to celebrate, the label is offering a completely free download-only compilation album featuring fourteen killer tracks.

Get your hands on the TOTAL ANNIHILATION compilation album for free at http://www.earache.com/totalannihilation

TOTAL ANNIHILATION features the following tracks:

1. The Trend
2. Ambush
3. Battered
4. Carnival Diablos
5. Back To The Palace
6. Nothing Left
7. Ultra-Motion
8. Ritual
9. King Of The Kill
10. Second To None
11. Ultraparanoia
12. Refresh The Demon
13. Tricks And Traps
14. Never Forget

The first three releases from the “Total Annihilation” reissue campaign, CARNIVAL DIABLOS, CRITERIA FOR A BLACK WIDOW and WAKING THE FURY, are available now in Europe, along with Annihilator‘s new, self-titled album. Get them now at http://earache.com/webstore/index.php/cPath/667_668_749

Annihilator have just added two dates in Greece to their upcoming European headlining tour. Catch the band live at the following shows:

• Oct. 05 – Paris, FRA – Divian Du Monde
• Oct. 06 – Antwerp, BEL – Trix
• Oct. 07 – Ludwigsburg, GER – Rockfabrik
• Oct. 08 – Luxembourg, LUX – Den Atelier
• Oct. 10 – Uden, NETH – Pul
• Oct. 11 – Frankfurt, GER – Batchkapp
• Oct. 12 – Cologne, GER – Stollwerk
• Oct. 14 – Berlin, GER – C-Club
• Oct. 15 – Hamburg, GER – Knust
• Oct. 16 – Copenhagen, DEN – The Rock
• Oct. 18 – Oslo, NOR – John Dee
• Oct. 19 – Gothenburg, SWE – Sticky Fingers
• Oct. 20 – Stockholm, SWE – Klubben
• Oct. 22 – Helsinki, FIN – Tavastia
• Oct. 23 – Tallinn, EST – Tapper Club
• Oct. 24 – Vilnius, LIT – New York
• Oct. 26 – Warsaw, POL – Progresja
• Oct. 27 – Krakow, POL – Loch Ness
• Oct. 28 – Prague, CZR – Retro Music Hall
• Oct. 30 – Wörgl, AUT – Komma
• Nov. 01 – Pratteln, SWI – Z7
• Nov. 02 – Nuremberg, GER – Hirsch
• Nov. 03 – Milan, ITA – Live Club
• Nov. 05 – Barcelona, SPA – Mephisto
• Nov. 06 – Madrid, SPA – Sala Live
• Nov. 07 – Bilbao, SPA – Kafe Antzoki
• Nov. 10 – Portsmouth, UK – Wedgewood Rooms
• Nov. 11 – Manchester, UK – Club Academy
• Nov. 13 – Newcastle, UK – Legends
• Nov. 14 – Glasgow, UK – Garage
• Nov. 15 – Sheffield, UK – Corporation
• Nov. 17 – Nottingham, UK – Rescue Rooms
• Nov. 18 – Bristol, UK – Academy 2
• Nov. 19 – Birmingham, UK – Academy 2
• Nov. 20 – London, UK – Islington Academy
• Nov. 24 – Thessaloniki, Greece – Principal Club Theatre
• Nov. 25 – Athens, Greece – Gagarin 205 Club

Get tickets to see ANNIHILATOR from TicketMaster at http://j.mp/agadFc

Annihilator European Tour Dates

Skeletonwitch

Angelus Apatrida

Staring out the window of KFC into the neon lights of downtown Glasgow in the rain, you’d be fooled into thinking you were watching Blade Runner. A shit Blade Runner filmed in a city crushed by the iron fist of Thatcher on a budget of £50 & a multipack of Marathon bars. Anyway, our fried chicken-based pitstop resulted in our missing openers Psychoanalysis. Arriving just in time for Angelus Apatrida, Latin for Rather Decent Spanish Thrash Band I’d Never Heard Of, they launch into a full pace, balls out thrashgasm in the vein of Kreator & Exodus. The Glaswegian crowd did their part for international relations by ending their set to a rapturous chant of “Gracias”.

Warbringer

I was quite looking forward to Warbringer, despite finding them a fairly unengaging proposition on the times I have seen them before, I was sure that their potential on disc had to cross over and tickle reality at some point. Maybe it was the confines of the cosy venue or the effect of the crowd rabidly hoovering up everything that they dangled forth like a coked-up Ian Watkins fluffing for ‘Bukkake Onslaught 6 – This Time It’s Personal’ (allegedly) but they majorly dominated my face. Unleashing the first 3 tracks from Waking Into Nightmares in order and increasing the thrash factor by a factor of 10 on each one was not a bad way to get things underway, the small but passionate posse of ‘bangers thoroughly losing their minds for a band that are strangely the mainstream media darlings of the new thrash scene. Their set was as good as they could possibly extract from their 2 and a bit releases, with Total War and Shoot To Kill ripping all and sundry like a large nailbomb in a small orphanage.

It was an excellent performance, Warbringer narrowly missing the hallowed 5 Grimmett accolade only due to their being bizarrely Rick Rolled by the crowd. Baloff would have unleashed the Helicopter Trout for that act of poserism. However, he would have already penalised 56,000 Grimmetts for their obliviously forming under the name Onslaught in 2004. They should be more careful and original when naming themselves, like I was when creating my 2 new thrash bands Metallica and Slayer.

Anyway,

Skeletonwitch

Skeletonwitch are the Rambo 4 of music. Taking the cheesy genius of the 80s & the cold, evil aggression of the 90s to create a single, perfect logical conclusion of muscles, gore & burning Vietnamese children. Much like Rambo 4, I spent the majority of their set short of breath & heavy on liquids in my underwear. Kicking things off with Submit To The Suffering, the entire set sided towards their latest LP Breathing The Fire, which is a shame as the very slightly superior Beyond The Permafrost is my preferred dose of skeletal witchery.

Highlight of the night, thrash anthem Stand, Fight & Die builds to a none-more-metal chant of “You Stand, You Fight, You Die!”. Despoiler of Human Live & Crushed Beyond Dust might not be the most progressive tracks in their canon  but it’s a week on & my neck is still testament to their destructive power, i.e., it is fucked.

Seeing as their average song runs to 3 minutes 3.843243243243246 seconds (I didn’t even have to normalise for outliers with that one), they managed to blast through a decent collection of tracks in their hour-long set. I was worried that with any more Skeletonwitch, my brain would do an Bobby Blitz & explode as a result of a massive thrashgasm/stroke. By the time they closed with Within My Blood, the majority of the crowd were on stage with them, much to the venue staff’s dismay. Returning for an encore of Baptized In Flames, waves of bodies suicide-dived face first back onto the concrete like an army of denim clad lemmings. It was a thing of beauty.

Nate Garnette might look like a lovable ginger Santa but put a Flying V in that man’s hands & he’ll riff your face off as he attempts to keep up with Scotty Hendrick’s insane, Hank Shermann-esque solos. Frontman Chance Garnette’s inimitable vocals grab your attention like an angry Norse god attempting to rape you in the ear with his massive noise-penis. Skeletonwitch are rightly considered leaders of the new thrash pack as they push the limits of the old templates but whilst their albums are great, live is where the dominate.

Lich King, Thrashing Is Their Business

Behave Yourself!

I’ve always been partial to a bit of Lich King. Toxic Zombie Onslaught was an enjoyable, low-fi homage to the thrash greats with some hilarious lyrics & the production of  a Mayhem live album. You can, therefore, imagine my surprise when I put World Gone Dead on. The vocals no longer drown out everything else, the bass is clear & the guitars sound meatier than Ian Watkins’ last snack.

Opening with an intro followed by the album’s weakest track seems like a strange gambit. Act Of War is more intense than a night in the woods with Raoul Moat but ultimately it lacks the panache & soul of previous albums. It does have an excellent SEGA-core outro though. I just copyrighted that so if Dragonforce attempt to use it, I can sue them until they can’t afford booze & have to suck off tramps for change in the bus station.

Thankfully, it is all uphill from there on. In accordance with recent thrash regulation 58 subsection D, there is an 80s action film tribute in the form of ED-209. A paean to the might of Robocop’s shiny robotic adversary, the King demonstrate exactly how to use a sample as ED’s machine guns turn to blasting drums & shredding solos reminiscent of Slayer before they went shit. A Storm Of Swords has all the groove of early Testament & could set off a circle pit in an mortuary.

The second half of the album is where Lich King’s new-found maturity really shines, straddling a note-perfect (possibly, who gives a fuck?) cover of Slayer’s masterpiece Aggressive Perfector. Grindwheel is a down tempo epic with some excellent guitar harmonies & a hefty doom break that should have bowels emptying for years to come.

Look at rainbows
Recycle cans
Mind your manners
Wash your hands

Behaver wins the Best Lyrics Of Any Thrash Song Ever award ending with a scream of “Behave Yourself!” & more Slayer-influenced fretwank. Closing with Lich King III (World Gone Dead), they pull out every trick in the book & proceed to choke you with it in a good way. The gang vocals of “All Hail The Lich King!” are sound advice as a massive breakdown gives way to a series of solos that show exactly how much they’ve improved. If you wrote them off after Necromantic Maelstrom or Toxic Zombie Onslaught, then you are a dumbass but give them another shot, it’s hard to believe it is the same band.

With World Gone Dead, Lich King have successfully made the hardest transition a metal band can make. They made the jump from novelty band kissing goodbye (passionately, on the lips) to the Brian Posehn & Van Cantos of the heavy metal bargain bucket. This album is proof that Lich King can play with the big boys of the new wave of thrash. Just don’t expect them to play nice.

Taken from last year’s brilliantly named yet slightly disappointing Massive Aggressive, Acid Sentence is Municipal Waste doing what they do best. It’s actually an exclusive debut to a site that’s not this one but I suspect that is an oversight on their part, rather than an intentional snub. Anyway, we nicked it & present it here for your audiovisual pleasure. It’s a bit of a gorefest, just the way we like things.

Municipal Waste Laying Um... Waste

Armored Saint

Legendary LA based metal band Armored Saint recently shot a video in their hometown on July 1st for the track Left Hook From Right Field off their current release La Raza with director Jeremy Schott of Mental Suplex.

Vocalist John Bush describes the video for ‘Left Hook From Right Field’:

“BAD ASS!!! That’s how I would describe this video. The photography is absolutely beautiful. Rene, the boxer, did a nobleman’s job and is convincing as hell. Jeremy’s team was awesome to work with and super efficient. Armored Saint was captured raw and with full power. Sometimes making a video, actually the majority of the time, making a video blows. Not this time!”

Bassist Joey Vera adds

“the video came out great and does justice to the song. We were going for a ‘Raging Bull’ look and I think we captured the vibe for sure. Most videos are pretty boring to make but this one was actually fun. We spent some time shooting scenes ‘on the fly’ and tried things out that were not in the story line, meaning we had a chance to improvise. The story line is a pretty good representation on the allegories that the lyrics paint. Good fun once again.”

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This makes absolute sense as the first album for me to review for our forgotten or overlooked classics section, as the ratio of genius to actual recognition is so phenomenally high (approximately a billion trillion to one at last count). Toxik are the kings of the overlooked thrash bands, the ones that sat 2 divisions below the big 4 but no-one really knows why. They burned brightly at the end of the 80’s, releasing two albums before breaking up in ’92, though they have since reformed and I await new material like some sort of thrash metal gimp chained in their cellar. For some, Toxik’s first album, 1987’s awesome World Circus, is their finest, but for me it is all about 1989’s follow up – Think This.

Maybe it’s because I wank over technical and progressive music so much, but Think This just seems to stand out above the gathered masses of the thrash pack, making all but the most seminal of albums seem as appetising as a shit and aids sandwich with extra shit.

The driving force behind the genius is Josh Christian, a truly incredible guitarist. It is an indictment of the world we live in that a man of this talent was out in the musical wilderness until their recent reunion. He sits on top of this record like a fat woman on a small mans face, absolutely dominating proceedings with guitar chops that should have seen him hailed as the thrash Van Halen. Where many thrash guitarists of the time were content playing fast, tuneless chromatic diarrhoea *cough* Kerry King *cough*, he was really pushing the envelope with bags of harmonics, sweeps, taps and whammy bar madness. Check out the Greed solo. Check out the Machine Dream solo!!! He should be up there on a diamond-encrusted throne with Skolnick, Friedman and the other hallowed names of thrash lead guitar, or at the very least be spoken of in the reverent tones reserved for the likes of Watchtower’s Ron Jarzombek.

In fact, Watchtower is a definite reference point for Think This, as they also took the thrash blueprint and doodled all over it with an array of technical flourishes, yet where Watchtower could often find themselves bogged down, Toxik never lose sight of the straight-up thrill of ball busting, neck breaking thrash. Songs like Technical Arrogance more than matched the ‘tower and Coroner at their prog thrash game, while Spontaneous and In God also capture the melodic side of Annihilator at their very best. The greater diversity of styles showcases the soaring vocals of Josh Sabin, and though Mike Sanders may have hit greater heights on World Circus, I feel that the more rounded approach displayed on Think This perfectly encapsulates the strides that the band as a whole had taken. There Stood the Fence is a thrash ballad™ of the highest, cheesiest calibre, but simultaneously a walk through a post-apocalyptic wasteland ravaged by nuclear Armageddon (This is 80’s thrash after all).

In fact it at face value it is such an awesomely 80’s album, the use of samples to begin many of the songs ties the album into a loose concept about the state of the world heading into the 90’s, racism, life in the shadow of the Cold War and the potential dissolution of a society in future shock. Which might seem very dated if the music itself didn’t sound so fresh. Bookended by the incredible Think This and instrumental Think That, there are no bad tracks (they even pull off a Led Zeppelin cover along the way) as should-be-classic after classic fly into your willing face.

This is an album that no self respecting thrash fan should be without, truly a classic album that should have been far, far bigger than it was as it basically makes most bands pitiful attempts sound like the last fart of a dying man. If you’re not into Toxik, you are not my friend.

Nevermore

Quoth the raven, “Tis fucking good”

It has been a tough 5 years. This Godless Endeavor dropped almost exactly half a decade ago & it blew the world away. The complaints leveled (rather unfairly) at Enemies of Reality were rectified when they brought in uber-producer Andy Sneap. Nevermore enjoyed new heights of success culminating in a support slot for nu-metal lightweights, Disturbed. I wish I were kidding. After this trauma, Nevermore released the brilliant Year of the Voyager DVD then promptly dropped off the radar.

From the opening strains of The Termination Proclamation, it’s obvious, they’ve done it again. Majestic heavy metal that defies genre classification. Loomis’s 7 string mastery, Warrel Dane’s soaring vocals & an underlying appreciation of melody that is so often missing in metal today. And The Maiden Spoke is pure My Dying Bride-esque doom metal channeled through the twisted imagination of King Diamond. Ballad Emptiness Unobstructed is the outstanding track of the album with Loomis mostly taking a back seat to let Dane demonstrate his power.

Is this soliloquy or psychosis,
Or self hypnosis?

Moonrise (Through Mirrors Of Death) – Nevermore

The lyrics may have been carved from a single, massive block of edam & delivered in a manner fatal to lactose intolerants but it adds a level of accessibility to proceedings. For all the progressive touches & the guitar work that makes every bedroom guitarist cry into their Squier Strat, what makes Nevermore so special is the fact that they make great heavy metal that everyone with an IQ above 7 can appreciate. The Obsidian Conspiracy can sit happily within their canon of greats, somewhere between Dead Heart In A Dead World & their 2 masterpieces, This Godless Endeavor & Enemies Of Reality.

Special note should be made of the Limited Edition packaging which includes the rather ambitiously titled Play Guitar Like Jeff Loomis & a ton of artwork that really deserves framing.

Overkill - Ironbound

Old School Kings Put On A Clinic

Thrash metal’s recent resurgence has left us with a few shining gems in a sea of mediocrity & recycled Exodus riffs. Whilst we looked to the future & filtered the wheat from the chaff, the thrash from the trash, the Gama Bombs from the Eviles,  New Jersey’s finest were putting together a masterpiece. Overkill have never been particularly progressive, they never went down the death vocals route a la Testament, the penis-flavoured corporate rock sound of Metallica. No, they preferred to thrash the old way, hitting everything head on with their punk-influenced brand of musical destruction & have the odd stroke on the way.

Overkill might be in their 30th year now but Ironbound has all the energy & punch of a bunch of ADHD delinquents on a day-trip to Starbucks. Opener The Green And Black serves as a devestating statement of intent with just a touch Take No Prisoners-style Megadeth mixed in there. The title track follows & it’s classic Overkill to the core (minor pun intended). Whilst Blitz’s unique voice & DD Verni’s distinctive pick bass have always formed the backbone of Overkill’s trademark sound, new drummer Ron Lipnicki really shines driving the tempo to a crushing pace. It also includes some of the best, most technical solos they’ve ever produced.  Both Derek Tailer & Dave Linsk have raised their game since the last album & the end result is outstanding.

[*] The Head & Heart is a lumbering heavy track that gives the feeling that you are about to be charged by a particularly vicious bull whilst the following cut, In Vain is a blinding yet funky thrashfest. Killing For A Living follows a similar structure to Overkill’s older material but is played with a machine-like precision that adds an extra bite to things. Closer The SRC is a beastly ode to the underground, a place Overkill have happily been reigning for last 3 decades.

The mix was handled by the ever capable Peter Tagtgren who is rapidly becoming to go-to guy for beastly sound, especially when Andy Sneap is unavailable. I’d go as far as to say that this is finest album Overkill have released since Necroshine & already a contender for album of the year.

If you aren’t currently an Overkill fan, this album isn’t going to do anything to change your mind, but if you don’t like Overkill, what the fuck are you doing on this fucking website. Leave your address as a comment below & I will charter a fucking jet to your doorstop, punt you in the face, snap your dick off with a crowbar, set it on fire & chuck it at your mum.

[*] We would like to apologise. There was intended to be, in the original review, another paragraph here detailing some of the stand-out tracks on the album. Unfortunately our reviewer got side tracked when it occurred to him that there might be some people that don’t like Overkill. I present the intended paragraph here & if you are a non-Overkill fan, kindly ask you to fuck right off.

Slayer - World Painted Blood

World Painted Bland?

People often say that Slayer have never made a bad album, which might well be true, but they have certainly made a few mediocre ones. The nu-metal influenced God Hates Us All and Diabolus in Musica (see ‘Love to Hate’) were hit and miss at best, and it would be fair to say that Slayer haven’t made a really great album since Seasons in the Abyss nearly 20 years ago. So, regardless of what meat-headed Slayer fanboys will tell you, and there are plenty around to do it, they have almost as much to prove on this album as Megadeth did on Endgame, even if they didn’t fall far enough to release an album quite as smelly as Risk.

World Painted Blood begins strongly with the title track, featuring some nice Mandatory Suicide spoken vocals from Tom which is followed by Unit 731, though Slayer, while playing very fast, fail to make a song about a WW2 Japanese unit that carried out experiments that would have Josef ‘Angel Of Death’ Mengele saying “hold on a sec there lads, that’s a wee bit needless” sound quite as fucking evil as it should.

Hate Worldwide, with its fairly generic riffing and facepalm inducing lyric of ‘I deny, I defy, and spread a little hate worldwide’ (no prizes for guessing it was Kerry ‘I steal my lyrics from angry 14 year old boys diaries’ King that wrote this gem) isn’t a particularly great song, but he redeems himself with the following track, the thrashtacular Public Display Of Dismemberment, and so the album continues on in this fairly inconsistent manner, threatening to gel into a big, solid thrash face fucking but with little inconsistencies and here and there that derail the momentum and we’re left with another mixed bag. Like Christ Illusion before it there just isn’t enough here to keep me coming back for more, yes it’s fast and yes it’s aggressive, but it lacks the sprinkle of class that sets an album like Seasons in the Abyss apart from what they have presented here.

It seems to me Slayer are caught in a conundrum, not doing anything wrong (no singing choruses – check, no br00tal breakdowns – check) and with a rabid fanbase that will lap this up, they are comfortably stagnating. It’s no coincidence that the best songs on the last couple of Slayer albums have come when they’ve pushed themselves or added some experimental touches, some texture and light and shade to their work, but they far too often fall back into Slayer-by-numbers, or even worse, sound like a Diabolus… b-side, and frankly it’s just fucking boring now unless you’ve only just discovered them.

In all, World Painted Blood is a solid but unspectacular album, with some moments on it that will make you medically NEED to headbang, but with others that just leave you feeling a bit ‘meh’. World Painted Blood is not a bad album, I mean come on, everyone knows Slayer have never released a bad album, but I’m still waiting on their next truly great one.

Onslaught - In Search Of Sanity

In Search Of Thrash Perfection

By 1989, Onslaught had established themselves as the biggest thrash band in the UK. Power From Hell was a rough, punk-influenced beast that, much like Venom’s debut, shocked the scene with its raw power. Two years & a line-up shuffle later, The Force was released to critical & public acclaim. The punk influences were scaled back for a more traditional thrash sound, longer songs & more structured riffing. Vocals for The Force were handled by then unknown, Sy Keeler. His guttural, snarling style added a whole new dimension to the band.

By 1986, Onslaught were set for worldwide thrash domination. Unfortunately, it was 3 years before the release of the next album. In these years, Onslaught’s new label had lost faith in Keeler’s vocal ability & decided to replace him. In a rare flash of brilliance, one which has not yet been repeated by a music label, they brought in a genuine metal god. Steve Grimmett had already made his name on the three legendary Grim Reaper albums. The label felt their new cleaner sound required a refined vocal style & that Grimmett was the man for the job.

Of course, any question over the choice of vocalist went out the window with a first listen to the finished article.

They kick things off like any sexual experience with five minutes of foreplay, in the form of an instrumental. This is followed by the sheer orgasmic joy of the title track. Heavy, Exodus-style riffing gives way to Grimmett’s awesome voice. The sound & subject matter are both reminiscent of Anthrax’s Madhouse.

If you want a thrash anthem, you are in luck because there are more here than in Metallica’s entire back catalogue. Shellshock, Lightning War, Power Play & Blood Upon The Ice are all fast heavy classics with brilliant guitar work from Nige Rockett & Rob Trottman and the best bass sound Onslaught have ever had.

There’s also a cover of AC/DC’s Let There Be Rock which sounds far better with Grimmett’s falsetto scream but the highlight of the album is the 12 minute thrash ballad Welcome To Dying. I am of the belief that there is no greater musical creation than the thrash ballad & this is one of the best ever. Grimmett’s vocals, Nige Rockett’s guitar work, everything about it is perfect.

This album receives so much hate, abuse, disrespect from almost all sides by uneducated, illiterate fuckbags who’s idea of good thrash consists of Rob Dukes era Exodus, Trivium & Linkin Fucking Park. The fact is this: Onslaught plus Grimmett equals an unmissable classic & one of the best albums of 1989.

Megadeth - Endgame

Leg-Endgame

Dave Mustaine is a bit of a cunt. It is his biggest problem, but is also his best feature and my favourite thing about him. He is like a cartoon villain, constantly whining about Metallica, then saying how ‘over it’ he is and how he loves them all, before saying Lars is a rat faced little fuckrag that couldn’t drum his way out of a wet paper bag, or words to that effect. He had the all-time classic heel-turn of becoming a born-again Christian. He has given interviews about how awesome his new band line-up is, yet he is the only member of the band on the back cover of Endgame. He constantly winds people up and makes them angry, calling Kerry King a big fat shit head-tattooed inbred with gay sunglasses and no ability to play the guitar (or words to that effect) about 30 seconds before announcing a tour with Slayer. For the last decade and a half (at least), people could say that Dave Mustaine was all mouth and no trousers, but with Endgame he has now created and donned a large pair of solid gold trousers with ‘Suck ma plums’ embroidered on the crotch in neon lights.

Whether the back cover represents it or not, Endgame is made by the arrival of the master Chris Broderick on guitar, whose shredtacular talents have forced Mustaine raise his own game much like he did after Marty Friedman joined about 20 years ago. In fact, certain points on this album feel like Michael Angelo Batio, Rusty Cooley, Yngwie Malmsteen and Paul Gilbert doing a full-tilt bukkake session on your face… and Mustaine is sneering about something in the background. That is a beautiful thing. While there are moments that it seems an overload of notes per second is about to occur, the solos are generally well thought out and tasteful, if you like the taste of guitar rape in your face that is.

If you can manage to put the massive levels of guitar pwnage to one side (unlikely), the album sounds bizarrely like a mixture of Killing Is My Business… and Youthanasia, seeing extremely old school riffs meeting with some thoroughly melodic choruses on many of the songs, though some have a crunchier, modern stomp that some die hard thrash fans might find slightly too reminiscent of shite bands like Devildriver. It’s a small complaint though when you weigh it up as a whole, considering the last couple of Megadeth albums have had more filler than a fleet of cement mixers. In fact, the more I think about it, even the perennially wanked-over Countdown to Extinction had some dodgy tunes on it, so Endgame comfortably slots into the top tier of Megadeth albums, which in turn places it many miles above generic dog shit like Arch Enemy that passes for ‘classic’ style modern metal.

If Mustaine can keep this line-up together (and get fucking Vic Rattlehead back on the front cover!) then I firmly believe that they can go on to leave attempts at proper singing and grooviness and make the true successor to Rust in Peace. For now though, everyone should be grateful that Dave has still got an album of this calibre in him and is still angry enough at everyone else in the world to want to prove it. If you can avoid looking with a rose tinted view of Megadeth past, Endgame should be hailed as a god-like slice of genius. This is a definite contender for album of the year.

Municipal Waste - Massive Aggressive

Massive Aggressive? More like Massive Disappointment

Despite being the best thing to come out of Richmond, Virginia since Earl Hebner, the latest Municipal Waste album is about as bland & unremarkable your average Paul Anka album. At no point in my repeated listens of it did I want to down a beer, punch out a police officer and dive face-first through a plate glass window. Where is the fucking party?

It does have some highlights. Wolves of Chernobyl and Mech-Cannibal both feature inspired moments that should have the circle pits the size of France going. Upside Down Church starts out with a chunky intro before taking you into space on a rocket made of pure shred that the Bay Area titans of yesteryear would have been proud.

The guitar work is as tight as ever, Dave Witte’s drumming is on par with Slayer’s and the bass sound is awesome. The only issue I have with the production is that on a whole, the album sounds too polished. The Waste play crossover thrash and it’s a well known fact that all crossover should sound like it was recorded in a biscuit tin by 2 deaf crack addicts.

My major complaint with this album is that every song sounds like the last. There are only about 5 moments on the record that actually stand out. Its all filler, no killer.