I was at Hastings browsing for nothing in particular when this album caught my eye with its incredible cover art. I picked up knowing automatically that it was a metal album, despite never having heard of the band previously. I looked at the back and saw that the album was released by Metal Blade. And that's all it took, I bought it.Well as it turns out this is a thrash metal band from Germany. Excellent. As I've said before, sometimes picking something up based solely on album art does pay off. Metal Blade seldomly steers me wrong either so that was another factor. The band bears some resemblance to the unholy trinity of German thrash metal bands, but to me, sounds more like they are channelling all sorts of thrash metal influences. I certainly hear some Sodom/Destruction/Kreator in the vocals and riffs, but I also hear a fair amount of Slayer (such as the soaring screams sounding like those that Tom Araya utilized in the early days), and a whole lot of Swedish thrash metal like The Crown and Witchery.
The riffs are blindingly fast and feature frequent lead guitar squeals over the top. The vocals are delivered in a harsh yell. This is true thrash metal delivered by a band that has been around long enough to have listened to its heyday. The best description of this would be Witchery playing Kreator. It is seriously a good thrash metal record without falling into the pitfalls of unoriginality. I am very glad I picked this up. It's been a pretty good year for thrash metal.
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