Void Terra Firma

On a musical level, these guys were awesome. The guitar riffs are plentiful and are as thrashy as thrashy riffs come. The drumming, which is the highlight of this band, thanks to the ultra talented Matt Vander Ende is incredible. Unfortunately however, this album suffers greatly in two main areas.
1. The vocals; Steev Esquivel sucks on this album, and even though he's better than the previous singer...he simply does not do the album justice. Someone hit the nail on the head in a previous review of this album, stating how he sounds like a drunken imitaion of Chuck Billy. Thats just about a perfect description. Its obvious though that Esquivel was not a singer, not only does he have trouble finding a key, his voice is somewhat different in every song, that being said, one can only assume that he was trying to find a comfortable voice to sing in. Its almost as if he was experimenting with his voice. Lesson to be learned...first learn how to sing before you assume vocal duties for a band.
2. The production; Or lack there of for better terms, is awful, the guitars suffer greatly, which is rather disapointing since as previously mentioned, there are some fantastic riffs going on here and the solos are technical and interesting...but unless you yourself are a guitar player, you'll probably be quickly turned off by the thin and hollow sound of the guitars.
The fact that the guitars sound like shit comes as somewhat of a surprise. Reason being that producer John Cuniberti has produced some great sounding guitar orientated albums such as Xentrix's Shattered Existence, Satriani's Surfing With the Alien and Vio-lence's Eternal Nightmare. So, we do know that the guy is a competent producer...I guess everyone fucks up...unfortunately its the band that suffers the most.
If anything this album can be greatly appreciated for the excellent drumming and the thrash metal attitude that is prevlant in each and every song...also their is a pretty decent cover version of Iron Maiden's Killers.
Other than that, this album is average at best.