Here Comes the Tank

Remember the good old days of German thrash metal where bands could pick and choose whether they wanted to party hearty (Tankard), bitch about how much the status quo in politics sucks (Vendetta) or just took the concept of evil to its logical conclusion (Teutonic Trio)? Well, I got a brief glimpse of the good old days when hearing this latest slab of punk infused goodness out of a criminally unknown and very new act in Mortal Strike, rolling out of my speakers like the tank that they claim is coming in the title of this little demo.

This is the sort of streamlined, straight to the jugular styled thrash metal that was all the rage back in the early to mid 80s, but later gave way to an either overtly technical craze in the case of the Bay Area scene, or an extreme aggression approach that flirted with death metal ala Sepultura and Slayer. At certain points I hear bits and pieces of early Destruction, but the big influence here is the proto-speed/thrash tendencies of early Tankard. Riffs are kept basic and catchy, while the vocals are shouted in a manner not all that far removed from Tom Araya.

After a brief intro that has since become a cliché approach to opening up even a small set of songs in this genre, what emerges is a gallop happy machine that remembers the beginnings of the style in “Outburst of Fury”, taking a few obvious cues from Slayer’s “Raining Blood” as well as Kreator. “Here Comes The Tank” takes a similarly riff oriented approach but bears slightly more resemblance to “Haunting The Chapel”, while “A Storm Will Overcome” places a brief intro somewhat reminiscent of Iron Maiden before going down a similarly dark and nasty route. But all becomes a fit of feel good partying with the ending song “Es Geht Rund”, which is more of a pre-thrash NWOBHM song with a riff set that reminds a bit of Diamond Head.

While far from being anything that can be claimed as original stylistically, Mortal Strike definitely has chosen the right influences to emulate. My biggest complaint is that they all but 100% faithfully recreate that same distant, low-fidelity production character that was typical of thrash albums circa 1983-85. But otherwise, a pretty solid example of how all you need to create a solid head banging experience is the right attitude, and this delivers it consistently.