...in the Name of Thrash Metal

In recent times, my progressively enforcing opinion is that modern thrash metal bands can't find a road to follow all together. For every desperate attempt to disprove the common idea that the genre is dead (Vektor), there are many other bands which limit themselves to give their personal twist to the 'classic' sound (Lich King, Evile), and nearly as many others that sound like they're inevitably stuck in the '80s (Suicidal Angels, Impalers). With regards to the latter category, it's by far the most tricky situation, given the high risk of creating anachronistic stuff that feels like thirty-something years too late. While this doesn't really pop up on higher profile bands like the ones I mentioned, you can be assured that beneath the surface lie a plethora of entities which are quite comfortable at releasing stuff comparable to those third-rate acts of those revered years (At War, Vectom, Hallows Eve). They didn't sound that good back then, but as 21st-century stuff they would sound even much worse. I had the questionable honor of listening to and reviewing Thrash or Die's debut Poser Holocaust, which suffered from these same problems, coupled with one of the most annoying voices I had ever heard. Back then, I deemed it the unquestionable nadir of my favourite genre. So, it's not a surprise I was struck by the assertion that something could be even worse...

Enter Extreme Attack, from Ecuador, and their debut ...in the Name of Thrash Metal.

In retrospect, Poser Holocaust could be given the mitigation of being a joke – albeit not a particularly funny one – but it still wasn't worth buying it from the bargain bin of your usual retailer. I still can't picture anybody who bought it thinking it was a good deal, but alas – I must have a too sophisticated sense of humour... or I like having CDs that sound good in my collection. And since the now-disappeared previous reviewer and compatriot Hellish_Torture sketched a comparison between these two bands, now the time has come for the most awaited event of the year: we're finally going to find the absolute bottom of the barrel of the entire thrash metal genre. The masterpiece in sucking all that is beautiful in our beloved genre dry. Let's see.

It would not be thrash if we didn't start from the guitars. Assuming this is more 'thrash' than 'trash'... well, I'm not a guitarist, far from it actually (excluding that Guitar Hero session from time to time), but I guess that when you consistently try to take as much as possible from the 'Thrash riffs 101' book, you'll end up with a couple of enjoyable riffs, by statistics. It's the broken clock rule. Obviously in both cases the axemen are careful not to do more than playing 2/3 standard riffs which had probably been done in a thousand variations many years before, so this would be a draw. Solos-wise, the situation doesn't improve that much, since guitarist Renata Pacheco makes her male counterpart Mario Cianci seem a virtuoso by churning out some audacious note progressions (e.g. on the closer) which even Mille Petrozza and Kerry King would deem too cacophonous to be put on tape. Just let that sink in. Speaking of the closer, which I omit the amazingly creative title of because I feel I'm already going to repeat those words ad nauseam in this review, it's a total rip-off of 'Tormentor' by Kreator, and that's frankly unacceptable. With all due respect, you are not playing a riff inspired by a less-known song by Assassin or Darkness, but you're plagiarizing HALF a song by THE most famous German band worldwide. Something like this is dreadful even for the low standards of ...in the Name of Thrash Metal. ToD get this round.

The drums. Well, the drummer nearly forced me to raise the rating, because his performance is light years ahead in terms of... well, everything compared to ToD's lifeless Darth Vodka. The man is Andree Aguilar, who plays also in a handful of death metal bands from Ecuador (kinda reminds me of those small towns like mine, where there are no more than one or two guys who can play drums, so they're in every band of the town), under the stage name of 'Insane Blast Beat', and he's even capable of doing – you may have guessed – blast-beats, so here he's practically wasted. It's like he's trying to revive a long dead and decomposed man with a defibrillator: if the rest was at least on par (or the man still breathing), it would have worked. He's still pretty repetitive in his playing, and the sterile production gives him no justice, but at least he seems the only one with a bit of energy. Anyway, he's out of the band... maybe it was too good for Extreme Attack. EA get this round.

The vocals. I'll put it bluntly. This guy and Dr. Fukk are really the two worst vocalists I've EVER heard. Choosing the 'best' between those two is an experience comparable only to a situation where you have to decide whether you'd want to die eaten alive by rats, or pierced slowly in your non-vital organs by katanas: in both cases you're going to die, and to die very, very painfully, so you struggle to find a little something that could make you choose one of them. In this case, I'd begrudgingly choose Dr. Fukk, because at least his voice can be traced back to some cult vocalists like Zetro or Blitz, even if parodied way beyond the point of no return, and you could maybe pick up one or two songs on the debut where he doesn't sound so bad to urge you to destroy your speakers/headphones. This Patricio Viveros is laughable at best, embarrassing at worst. I'd literally bury my head underground if somebody caught me listening to these horrible attempts at... speaking clichés with a slight sense of rhythm and questionable English accent, coupled with so many 'yaow's that'll make you yearn to be listening to the worst James Hetfield instead? Whether you may or may not like internet slang, it's just... cringe, I cannot think of a better word to define it (though 'awful', 'hideous' and every other synonym you can think of are all good choices). I wonder how he can go outside and tell people 'Hey, listen, folks, that's me singing in this absolutely dead serious and not parody metal band!', seriously, I'm jealous of his self-esteem. ToD sucks a little tiny bit less in this round.

The bass. You can choose whether this paragraph disappeared into a passage for another dimension, was stolen, or simply there's nothing to speak about because there's nothing to hear in both cases. Or better, in the case of Extreme Attack, an audible bass with a single guitar is not a victory. Draw.

Bonus paragraph: the artwork. Now I don't think it's awful, it's incredibly cliché, that's for sure, but it couldn't have been otherwise... the style of drawing is at least nice, but the comic sans used for the title is atrocious. Still, a bonus point for Extreme Attack, for what it's worth.

Now, best songs? Ha! Don't make me laugh. Distinguishing between songs is harder than draining the Pacific Ocean using a colander (thankfully this also means there are no midpaced songs... God knows what abominations they would have created), and the Kreator rip-off otherwise called the closer of this album puts the final nail in the coffin of ...in the Name of Thrash Metal. Even the introduction manages to be incredibly unoriginal in only one minute (just think of the first minute of Cranium's Speed Metal Slaughter, but without the fun and the chainsaws). Yes folks, this is really the lowest you can go if you want to play thrash metal. I'm not going to raise the rating of my review for Poser Holocaust because I still feel that it's unacceptable by modern standards, but if compared with something which manages to be even worse at times, it's a 0% that has a bit more value than this. Not a huge accomplishment, but whatever.

Admittedly ToD got really better on their sophomore Melting Your Skull, which I've already praised for its musical skills (but what can you expect since they recruited Alex Marquez and Ryan Taylor for it?) which nearly managed to catch my attention, if it weren't inevitably kidnapped, drawn and quartered by Dr. Fukk's rubber duck-voice. Unfortunately, since by contrast EA kicked out their only standout member (envy?), that's something I'm not expecting to see from them, also judging by their latest EP... if in five years they're still sounding the same, I guess there has to be something wrong. Avoid this like the plague, or go search it and laugh at it, if you're in dire need of proofs that there are worse bands than yours. It works.

South America often guarantees very roughly produced extreme metal, but in the case of Extreme (!) Attack I have ironically determined that they are able to deliver remarkably elaborate thrash. For example, the quasi-title cut, "Thrash Metal", starts with a razor sharp riff and sounds like classic Forbidden stuff. It is fast without being chaotic and possesses the necessary degree of melody. A nice detail is that the lead singer reports to an unknown genre called seemingly "trash" metal, but that does not bother me, however.

Extreme Attack are not fixed to thrash metal in the manner previously described. They are also familiar with relevant German releases of the eighties. The crude "Metal Slave", for example, bursts out like an early tantrum of Kreator. It puts the focus on aggression and neglects technical refinement. It surprises further with a novel bass break. Hopefully Tom Angelripper will never hear it, otherwise he probably will be filled with bitterness that he did not invent it back in 1984. His Ecuadorian brother in crime, bassist and lead singer Patricio Viveros, is not the greatest thrash metal vocalist of all time. His nagging is solid without setting a new standard. Thank God he cannot be confused with those Donald Ducks who disguise themselves as metal singers.

The musicians permanently hold up the energy level. The song titles underline that - "War Never Ends", "Assassin", "War Is Shit" and so on. Do not try to find new aspects in the lyrics. It is much more important that the band presents a mixture of enthusiasm, passion and unconcern that culminates in a couple of very good tunes. The rapid "War Never Ends", for example, offers an outstanding chorus while "Hell´s Priest" lives on its very high dynamic. "Hell Is Your Destiny" begins with distinctive drum staccato and a fine riff. Unfortunately, its long outro - sounds of a battle - hurts the flow of the album. Apart from that, perhaps a few parts of the songs do not seem to be brand new, but they do not copy and that is the main thing.

Despite my prejudice, the Ecuadorian horde convinces with a clear and appropriate production. It can be compared easily with European or North American outputs.

The poorly constructed cover is worthless rubbish, the amateurish implementation of a ridiculous subject. There is huge potential for optimization in this respect, not least because the intro delivers the soundtrack to the cover motif, but this is ultimately regardless in view of the fact that the music of Extreme Attack is great entertainment.

Hailing from the South American country of Ecuador, Extreme Attack is a thrash band that was formed in 2011 by bassist and vocalist Patricio Viveros and guitarist Renata Pacheco after the demise of the their previous band, Metal Slave. Rounded out by drummer Andree Aguilar, Extreme Attack released “Assassin” in 2011, which was an independently released three track EP. 2013 saw the band's debut full length released by the Mexican thrash label, EBM Records, entitled “...In the Name of Thrash Metal”. Yes, that is one of the most generic titles I've heard in sometime, so it should not surprise you that Extreme Attack bring forth an album full of completely generic, by the numbers thrash metal.

“...In the Name of Thrash Metal” is full of everything you'd expect from a thrash album, because there are hundreds, nay thousands of bands that have written similar music throughout the years. This could be because of the so-called thrash revitalization in recent years, where young, up and coming whippersnappers have taken their shot at belting out thrash anthems. The sad truth is that few bands are able to capture the sound and spirit that made the early to late eighties thrash scenes so damn entertaining. I digress, though, because this is not my dissertation of the late period thrash scene, instead a review of one young group's effort at reclaiming thrash's glory days. Extreme Attack run through the motions with ten tracks of fast paced thrash metal that lies fairly close to the Teutonic sound of early Kreator and Destruction. It's juvenile, and oftentimes laughable, but catchy and somewhat enjoyable at times.

The guitar riffs are mediocre. I’m not sure what you like in your thrash but a major component of thrash needs to be good guitar riffs. There are some standout riffs on the album, like the main riff on “Hell is Your Destiny” or the opening to “Sinners in Heaven”, which really call to mind the early works of Mille Petrozza, with the fast paced, palm muted guitar rhythms coupled with minor chord embellishments and slight tempo changes which build into rhythmic chugging. For the most part, though, the guitars fight the rest of the instruments for prominence, as the bass and cymbals are a little too loud in the mix to allow complete focus. Most of the guitar segments are just chuggy palm muting and basic chord progressions that we've all heard hundreds of times. The bass is loud but sounds pretty frumpy, as it just wallows around with a thick and muddy tone. Just listen to the bass breaks on “Metal Slave” which showcase a fairly simple bass solo, which, after repeated listens, I still can't fathom why the band left it on the album. It's almost as if the sound engineer just abruptly hit mute on the rest of the music then the bass continues plodding for a bar or two and then everything picks right back up. It would be a cool idea if the bass line was excellently crafted or if the start / stop segment sounded spot on, but the whole ordeal was just sloppy. The drums have two speeds, either blasting double bass runs or a relatively standard style of double kick patterns heard on every other Thrash album in creation. The drums suffice to move the music along, but there are no outstanding fills or even any slightly above average handwork. The guitar solos are enjoyable, yet simple in nature, consisting mostly of fast paced finger tapping and simplistic scale work.

Of course, we have to discuss the vocals, and sadly, this is where the band completely loses me. I understand there is sometimes a language barrier, usually evidenced by some Asian bands and the nearly endless treasure trove of Engrish vocals. While Extreme Attack might not be at the same level of comedic gold as Loudness or Abigail, the entirety of the vocal performance is laughable. Let’s start off with what the band was trying to do: the singer attempts to go for a raw and dirty vocal style. The vocals are fairly mid-range and nasally and sound almost like the vocalist is talking fast, but the singer makes attempts at raspy higher registers which utterly fail. All that aside though, the singer’s intonation and phrasing is what makes Engrish come to mind. The album’s closing track, “Thrash Metal”, shows this the best as you hear the singer repeatedly squelching “Trash metal!!!! Trash metal!!! Meow.” That was not a typo, he was actually saying “trash.” The catcall wasn’t a typo either. Scattered throughout this dismal vocal performance are what I can only describe as meows. At the end of just about every line on “Final Judgement” the singer belts out some type of feline call that sounds like it was taken from the traffic stop scene of “Super Troopers”. It sounds so awkward and absurd that I can’t even believe they put it to tape. The lyrics don’t help much either as every track is juvenile and generic as hell.

The band sounds good the few times the few times that everything clicks, but even when the band is on fire the vocals ruin it. This is fairly competent yet juvenile thrash metal with awful vocals. If I want to listen to a cat screeching, I’ll visit the humane society, not to this. I can’t recommend this to anyone unless you want to scratch your head in dumbfounded amazement. There are a lot of decent thrash bands that deserve your attention and this is not one of them. It’s sad though, because this could have been, at best, a middle of the road album, but those vocals drag this well below mediocre.

Written for The Metal Observer:
http://www.metal-observer.com/