Thermonuklear Thrash Metal Warfare

Well, I certainly can't claim false advertising. What you see is what you get, and upon opening the case, I was greeted with a disc that in bold capital letters declared "THRASH METAL." This is certainly no poser, Pantera-wannabe, kiddie-pleasing half-thrash. What we have here is a collection of real THRASH METAL demo tracks from two bands who, love THRASH METAL.

The only real problem here is the presence of the word "demo." Oh, how much more awesome this split would be with some decent production! It could be worse, as the guitar tones are pretty solid, and the vocals come through well enough, but there is no low end for Nailgunner's tracks. The bass is nonexistent, and if we hear the kick drum at all, it's just a mild pitter-pat. Snare and cymbal come through plenty loud, though. But Wounds is a different story. In fact, there's so much low end it almost makes the guitars murky. A little cleaner, and it would sound perfect.

Things start off a bit rocky with the nice and thrashy but ultimately pedestrian "Shortcut To Hell," and "Nailgun Attack" takes to long to get launched for how short it is. The other Nailgunner tracks are very solid slabs of thrash, but while highly competent, you're not in for any real surprises here. "Nuklear Tormentor" gets special note for being the most furious of their tracks, and would certainly be awesome to see live.

Then Wounds comes in and kicks things up a notch. I'll admit I purchased this album for the Nailgunner originally, but Wounds is definitely the better-represented band here. Just as fast as Nailgunner, but much harder-hitting and significantly darker. Just listen to those riffs in "Violent Warfare" and the bridge in "Ritual Afterlife!" Venom and Kreator would be proud. Again, not much in the way of surprises to be found here, just great, straight-forward, balls-out THRASH METAL (delivered as the disc promised).

I can't call this a masterpiece, but it's definitely a solid dose of home-brewed thrash. And you know you always could use more thrash.

Please note that the score would easily go up ~6% if Nailgunner had had better production on the tracks, so if you really don't mind "raw" production jobs, take that into account.