Rainhold

He we have an old Czech thrash album which still holds strong after all these years. The vocals are aggressive, the production is clear, heavy and suitable for more than one era and musically this group are in perfect working order!

What a thrash fest it is. The semi-technical break-laden thrash assault of opener ‘Dokonalej vrah’ followed by the speed metal sing-a-long anthem ‘Rainhold’. Great choice to be the title track obviously. ‘Zvíøe v tìle’ is so clearly directly influenced by Holy Moses’ FwtD album, it’s almost creepy…but is it a clone? No, since Ota Husák doesn’t sound anything like Sabina Classen and has more of an Petrozza/Angelripper thing going on, they stay in the clear. Or just listen to that superb opening riff to ‘Útìk ze stínù’. Underground Eastern European stuff can’t get much better than that!

Is it all speed, fast, relentless an such? No, just take ‘Ninja’ which is almost a doom song including a catchy intro and a melancholic lead. Try to imagine the rare slow songs from Sodom’s Persecution Mania-Better Off Dead days and slow that down a little once more. Yes, doomthrash. Also the not so fast ‘Blázen’ has enough of variation and add some sweet flavours by including good backing vocals. The clean intro to ‘Krev v tvých oèích’ (which turns into a thrash monster) is even beautiful.

No weaknesses? Well, yes there are. Songs like ‘Toluen’ don’t live up to the rest of the album but still cannot be considered filler or bad.

There isn’t much to complain about this album. Just like English, Portugese German, Czech also is a great language for thrash since it can sound truly filthy and aggressive. I just can’t understand what the hell they’re singing about. They could as well be selling used cars through their songs.