“When considering what Brazil is best known for, people often throw out things like the Amazon rainforest, round-ball football, coffee, beef, and that really tall statue of the Christmas Superstar, but you and I both know that Brazil is primarily known for thrash metal. Seeking to add to that legacy, Deathraiser is raising themselves from the dead by releasing sophomore album Forged in Hatred a mere 15 years after their debut.” Hate can’t be built in a day.
March Filters bring summer bewilders when missed, so come see what we found in the iron scrapings.
“Nearly three years ago, I dropped a Very Good score on Sinister Monstrosities Spawned by the Unfathomable Ignorance of Humankind, the sophomore record from Seattle’s Kaiju-themed death/thrash purveyors, Oxygen Destroyer. The earnestness with which band leader Lord Kaiju and his party of massive-monster minstrels weave their tales of gargantuan creatures into their furious metal through the use of film samples and sound effects lends their no-nonsense music a certain nerdtastic charm, and that album earned an Honorable Mention spot on my 2021 year-end list.” Big monsters!
Our resident King of Enthusiasm and Trad Metal has much wisdom to share and it has been summarized and bullet-pointed in his Top Ten(ish) of 2023 for those of you who weren’t paying attention all year! Listurnalia rolls on, ever more refined.
Do you even lift, brah? If so, we have the soundtrack to your bumper plate annihilation. Grow or die at the AMG exercise vault.
“When I saw the beautiful artwork for Seasons Dreaming Death, the debut album from Indianapolis thrashers GraveRipper, I had high hopes that it would inject some spice into my love affair with the riff, and when I discovered that GraveRipper’s members have been involved with projects sporting distinguished names like Partiac Arrest and Car Door Dick Smash, I figured that I was in store for a good time. Let’s see if these guys managed to leave me satisfied and smiling.” Grave developments.
“Punk and metal have a complicated relationship, or at least we treat them like they do. As fans, we like to be something—a metalhead, a punk, a dissobro. As music seekers, we like to have genre guides—punk-born tags like crust, mathcore, grindcore, metal-born tags like doom, death, black, kissing cousins like sludge, thrash, deathcore. And the bands we value tend to play to or play with these expectations. Others eschew the norms of where they’re placed or even fight the idea of being the guitar music we’ve all come to love—but not Systemik Viølence. These Portuguese knuckleheads just wanna play screeching chords, overdriven bass, and venomous vocal lashings loud, fast, and loud.” Feel the wiølence.
“It’s certainly not unusual for me to field accusations of improper scoring around these parts, but, while I usually stand by my assessment of a record long after the review has come and gone, I’m willing to admit that I do occasionally get things wrong. Case in point: Enforced’s 2021 album, Kill Grid. I was initially enamored by that record’s furious hardcore-tinged thrash, and, at the time, a 4.0/5.0 score was a no-brainer. But the intervening years and my countless returns to the album have revealed an inescapable truth: I should have scored it higher. Needless to say, follow-up War Remains approaches the battlefield facing a nearly invincible host of expectations.” Of war crimes and MOAR crimes.
“Ask most folks around the world to describe Swiss culture in a word, and I’d bet that “precise” ends up in the top ten most common responses. Switzerland is known for producing precision-made watches, cutlery, and chocolates, and thanks to Coroner’s technical version of the genre, we can probably add precision-made thrash metal to the list. And if we want to emphasize that last point, we need look no further than Swiss thrashers Algebra.” Fast maths.
“Sympathy for the Ignorant is ten tracks and 38 minutes of groove-centric thrash metal. Misfire’s sound walks the line between pure thrash and crossover and really doesn’t care which side of the line you want it to stage-dive into. I hear similarities to some of the big-name crossover bands like Enforced and Power Trip.” Thrash til dive.
