Victim of Yourself

Victim of Yourself is the debut album by all female Brazilian thrash metal trio Nervosa, and it’s an explosive effort. It rips and snarls in true thrash fashion, and it sounds incredibly sincere – it’s not just yet another boring retro-thrash release, rather it’s an excellent and varied album. While it doesn’t reinvent the wheel of thrash, these lady’s effort doesn’t sound like an attempt to simply sound like Slayer, or Metallica, or any other band with hundreds of copycats, rather they just wrote a rather great and somewhat original thrash metal album.

Starting with an eerie intro with women’s screams and mechanical noises, the album kicks off with a slow and evil sounding riff, before the album kicks off with the first real track “Twisted Values”. With a rather dull stop-start riff intro riff, from there it really kicks off into a good track. With some really heavy, catchy riffs and some excellent vocals from bassist/singer Fernanda Lira, her voice sounding like Chuck Schuldiner snarling with something of a thrash edge, it sounds evil and brilliant. The guitar tone throughout the album is excellent, really thick and heavy, and guitarist Prika Amaral delivers great riff after riff, while there are excellent melodic solos throughout. The rhythm section throughout the album is particularly brilliant, with the bass playing sounding a bit like Alex Webster’s approach with Cannibal Corpse, it’s very low and heavy, especially in “Justice Be Done”, rumbling away with great energy, while the drumming is frenetic and passionate, varying between all out speed, and slower more crushing sections, with some great fills.

The best track by far is the brilliantly titled “Nasty Injury”, which has the best riffs by a long way, moving seamlessly between each one, from heavy, slow and crushing, to melodic, fast and catchy, it’s simply a riff-fest of immense proportions, and with the bass rumbling and twanging away at its best, its one of the best thrash metal tracks of recent years. “Envious” is fantastic too, perhaps the heaviest track, with lightning fast drums, and a real cannibal corpse vibe in the guitars and bass, with excellent vocals, it’s another thrashy monster of a track. The album continues in this way with excellent thrashy tracks, up into the somewhat cheesy “Into Mosh Pit”, with it’s chorus of “Into Mosh Pit” being repeated, its a bit dull, despite the excellent music. Overall this is definitely one of the best debut thrash albums of the last few years, and I would definitely recommend it to anyone looking for a great modern thrash metal album, especially one which doesn’t sound like a nostalgic rip-off. Nervosa definitely have a fantastic future ahead of them, and I will be following their career with great anticipation.

Originally written for swirlsofnoise.com