Pandemonium

Say "Modern thrash bands" to the average group of young metalheads, and what will you get? The Haunted. The Crown. Shadows Fall. If you're really lucky, someone will mention Deströyer 666. If you're unlucky, someone will mention Killswitch Engage (at which point, it should go without saying, you stab them in the face and urinate on their dead body).

But this is what they SHOULD be saying. This is old-school thrash riffage, Kreator-esque technical slaughter with a touch of of Vio-Lence's schizophrenic riff structure, melded with modern chaos and brutality. The vocals are almost black metal snarls, backed by a guttural growl. The lead work isn't particularly flashy or innovative, but it's solid; the bass is really excellent, good enough to warrant actual audibility and several breaks throughout the album. And the drums! The drums are inhumanly awesome, controlled chaos approaching death metal, with blast beats used as they should be–occasionally, for effect.

If this album has a weakness, it's a sort of general blending-together of the tracks, reminiscient of Testament's Practice What You Preach (although for different reasons). It's not that the songs aren't distinct, but...perhaps a better comparision would be Sodom's Agent Orange, which has been described by respected reviewers as "not so much nine individual songs as a solid chunk of thrash metal divided up into nine sections." Pandemonium sort of has that effect; the music is much more technical, but it definitely takes some close listening for the distiniguishing features of all the songs to come out.

But they are there, oh yes, they are there. Take "World of Misery," which begins with a straight-up death metal riff and blastbeats and, in the first minute of the song, goes through at least nine time changes. I shit you not. Then it's pure thrash throughout, but with still more time changes to come, including an absolutely insane breakdown that begins with the bass break at 2:55 and includes beats that beg the question of whether their drummer is actually the evil Doctor Octopus, hiding in a Brazilian thrash band while he plots his revenge against Spider-Man.

Also awesome is opening track (well, after the intro, which is so unremarkable that the band just called it "Intro") "Horror And Torture," which has a fairly simplistic structure compared to some of the other songs, but the absolute most fiendishly old-school moments on the disc in the verse riffage ("LET ME TAKE YOU DOWN TO HELL!") and the "Angel of Death" worship breakdown at 2:30 or so. And the double-tracked lead guitars are just a thing of beauty.

What else rules? EVERYTHING. More specifically, "Pandemonium" has some really ludicrous structuring, verse and chorus time signatures that just fuck with your neck until you consider actual litigation against this band for deliberately causing harm to your person. "The Curse of Sleepy Hollow" has some gruesome death vocals in the beginning and a chugging riff at 2:53 that is the absolute heaviest thing on this disc, which is a hell of an achievement. Oh, and the intro to that song, "Requiem For the Headless Rider," is a really cool instrumental with some great haunting melodies that only increase the brutality of the following madness. Finally there's "Out of Control," which has vocal-lead guitar tradeoffs in the second verse that are straight out of 1983 (except with blastbeats and growls), and crazed drumming that sets my Spider-Sense tingling once again.

Riffs for everybody are to be found here, but with an added sense of technicality and appreciation for the fine-art of skullcrushing brutality that bodes well for the future. If you ever find yourself doubting whether thrash metal is still viable in the era of One Kill Wonder and As the Palaces Burn, then listen to this album and rejoice as your soul is saved from poseurhood.