Ode to Death

Starting the reformation campaign with an ode… well done, Brazilianos! Only that the intended campaign never materialized as the guys stopped creating after the album reviewed here, spitting two re-mastered versions of their debut 12 years later. No, this isn’t what I call returning with a bang, but at least I‘ll try to see now how worthy their comeback stint is.

The guys left things a bit messy in their camp back in 1992 with “Blood on the Rocks”, a scattered mish-mashy entry featuring quite a few non-thrashy dissipations to the more dominant aggressive flair. In other words, their classic thrash credo was left up to scrutiny, not exactly in tatters, so this ode here was bound to repair the glitches in the Witchhammer machine. The thing is that said glitches have always been around, on the first instalment included, the band never sticking to a no-bars-held old school thrashy hammering from beginning to end.

The situation has surely improved on this ode, the guys start full of brutal passion, the death-peppered “Oija Board” and the vicious thrash-fest “Wrath of Witchhammer” establishing a less compromising stance, including in the vocal department where a very shouty rending death metal throat has taken the whole space. Those accustomed to the band’s diverse compendiums will expect the approach to go all over the place after this hyper-active introduction, but save for the more relaxed thrash/crossover joy “The Machine of War” the follow-up remains quite intense, including on the few more complex epic pieces (“Weekend in Auschwitz”, “Metaphysics”) on which the musicians experiment with both heavy stoical passages and openly brutal deathly escapades. Brevity and violence are the name of the game elsewhere, the guys pouring maddening ragers (“Dartherium”, “Remains the Same”) from all sides over the intimidated listener, with hardcore (“Witchery”) called for help at times, the slow-moving but effective quasi-doomster “Kill Us!” decidedly a pleasant mutation.

Considerably better than the last offering before the dissolution, this opus leaves something to be desired in every aspect, the abrasive noisy production one in particular, but it’s obvious that the band mean business, sounding fairly quarrelsome and confrontational as well, the retro thrash spells of yore now glued with death and hardcore, the most fitting ingredients. It’s one pummelling wall of sound that has been achieved for the most part, but for a comeback offering this is by all means the better option than another incongruent stylistic transmogrifier. The title is partly justified by the several ventures into a more brutal death metal territory, but overall this is another classic thrash saga, more homogenous, more compact, more intense, and consequently more listenable than its bloody mary... sorry, rocky predecessor.

I want to believe that the hammer in their camp is still hitting the creative anvil… not to forge rehashed old tunes, but to heat up another brand-new ode to all things metal. Thrash, death, hardcore… it all falls into one place, where even the Grim Reaper fears to tread, threatened by the strong shiny metallic armour standing guard.