Self Mutilation

After 6 years without an album French thrashers returned to the front with 'Self Mutilation'. An album on which they mixed their old thrash metal with a load of industrial death metal and incidental blast speed drums. Try to imagine a very aggressive blend of Renewal-era Kreator mixed with Fear Factory and a decent lot of Testament-influenced riffs.

'Do Or Die'is a really extreme industrial death metal song on which only the riffs refer to old school thrash. 'Truth and Reality' is an old school uptempo thrasher with U.S. riffing and a blast speed chorus. 'Lost'' is death-thrash in its purest form with a bridge in the middle that could have come straight from Dutch death metalers Acrostichon. Also worth mentioning is ‘Fanatic Mind’ which has a great Testament-orientated solo and Sepulturish chorus. From this point of the album keeps repeating itself within these boundaries. Yet most of the riffs, chorusses and the overall energy are strong enough to keep the album interesting. Due to the aggression, vocals and blast speed drums the album comes close to being a death metal album. The riffs however are still thrash metal enough. Try the intro to ‘Individualistic Ideal’, it can’t get any more thrash metal than that.

On the album as a whole keyboards and other spacey sounds do not play that big a part as they were going to do on 'Machinery' but they're already present here, giving the album an eerie Matrix-like atmosphere. From a creative point of view their next album would turn out to be more catchy and original, but 'Self Mutilation' is far more aggressive.