It’s that time again. And by “that time,” I mean the time when Steel Druhm throws a public fit because his little slice of nostalgia isn’t going to be the Record o’ the Month. He will complain loudly in the comments. He will post complaints and whine. But alas, this month it was pretty obvious who the RotM should belong to. Break out your flamethrowers! Commence the wailing and/or gnashing of teeth! The misery is gonna get Biblical up in here.
“Arizona thrashers Vektor hold a special place in my cold black heart, as their previous album Outer Isolation was one of my very first reviews for this esteemed website. Crazy to think that that was five years ago, and crazier still is that Vektor has not released any new music in that half-decade — practically an eternity in today’s climate of short attention spans and equally short tour/record/tour cycles. Fortunately, Vektor has finally rewarded their fans’ patience with a lengthy, almost impossibly dense record called Terminal Redux.”
“Have you ever wondered what Lanfear would sound like if they played old-school thrash metal? How about if Atlantean Kodex had listened more to Exodus than Epicus Doomicus Metallicus? If you said yes to both those questions, then you are Steel Druhm and I claim my five pounds.” Re-thrash makes people wonder about many things.
“As noted in our brief thrashnalysis a few months ago, Peak Rethrash occurred in 2006 (defining Peak Rethrash as the year the largest number of new thrash bands formed). This makes Deathblow relative latecomers, forming initially as Deathblo in 2008 before buying a dictionary in 2012.” We examine trends, compile stats, crunch numbers. Then, and only then, do we rethrash!
“Hi, I’m Diabolus in Muzaka. You’ve probably read some of my musings on metal music in this space. I come to you today not just as a reviewer, but as a man who has been affected second-hand by appliance violence. Laugh at the cover or concept here all you like, but having witnessed a close friend’s assault by an appliance gone rogue, I see Killer Refrigerator as selfless visionaries using metal to bring us this message of our pending appliance-driven annihilation.” Honey, that appliance just called me an asshole!
“After consuming my fill of thick gourmet stew from doom heavyweights YOB and Pallbearer over the past month, it’s refreshing to get back to some no-frills meat and potatoes metal, courtesy of unsigned Californian thrashers Madrost. Firstly, the fact the band is unsigned is a little baffling, especially when considering the subpar tripe that winds up on labels these days. Not that Madrost are a particularly game changing or innovative band ready to set the metal underground ablaze, but they certainly have the chops and enough of their own identity to warrant a record deal.” It has been said we only review thrash here at AMG (or was it death)? Either way, here’s some fucking thrash!
“Baroness frontman John Baizley was having drawer’s block. Some Ohio blackened thrash metal band called “Skeletonwitch” had contracted his service for drawing metal album cover art, but when he drew up a draft that depicted a naked woman covered by foliage at the NSFW areas and surrounded by random animals, the band rejected it on grounds of un-creativity. Oh, the nerve of those Southeasterners. What were they expecting to see? Fully-clothed women and machines?” How dare they be art elitists?? Well, I suppose we can’t expect every blackened re-thrash band to be culturally refined, but at least Skeletonwitch knows how to tear your face off.
F.A.G. isn’t too sure about the merits of the retro-thrash movement, so naturally, he invented a drinking game!
As I mentioned in a previous review, I like to think I value originality in music. I have little patience for bands that are merely retreads or knockoffs of other groups. So you can imagine my reaction when, a couple years ago, I stumbled on Black Future, the debut album from Arizona thrashers Vektor. The cover of that album looked like this. For those of you unaware, there is a band called Voivod. They have a logo that looks like this. “What in unholy fuck was going on here,” I thought? Is this some sort of joke? Is Vektor to Voivod what Municipal Waste is to D.R.I.? What possible motivation could a band have to do that? And more importantly, is it any good? Two years later, curiosity finally got the better of me, and I decided to check out Vektor’s newly-released follow up, Outer Isolation.
