Blood Tsunami - Thrash Metal
Nocturnal Art
2007
For some reason, retro thrash is hip right now. Every other day seems to yield another band with denim jackets, improbable hair, and Ed Repka artwork. However, little of this stuff feels like what it claims to emulate. The riffs, tones, beats, vocals, and, most importantly, the vibe are all different.
Hence my suspicion at the brazen title of Blood Tsunami's debut album. It's almost as ludicrous (and unimaginative) as Annihilator's forthcoming Metal. While the Norwegian band may fancy itself flying the flag of thrash, I really don't agree. I do hear bits and pieces of the German and Bay Area sounds, including a brief, blatant Slayer homage/ripoff. But overall, this doesn't walk the walk - of pure thrash, anyway. It is a pretty solid metal album, though.
What separates so much nu-old thrash, including this album, from the true old-school is that it's too melodic. Plenty of '80s thrash was melodic, but it usually alternated with atonal riffing or revolved around a static tonal center. These nu-old thrash bands do chord progressions that no '80s band would never do. It's tough to explain, but old-school thrashers will feel the discrepancies instantly.
Another big difference is sound. The production is too crisp and the guitar tones are too big now to feel like old-school thrash. Much of that vibe came from bad production and cheap guitar tones, which just don't happen in today's climate of scientific metal production.
Objectively, none of this is bad. Melody can be good, and good production can be good. In fact, they make this album enjoyable. The riffs are catchy, and the drumming (by Faust of Aborym/Emperor) is lively and effective. The vocals are faceless, but I've heard worse. "Godbeater" is the highlight, a ten-minute melodic monster that's far removed from '80s thrash. Once I stopped expecting a thrash album (which was tough, given the title), I enjoyed this a lot more.
You can find it in Europe at Plastic Head; those in the US might have to wait a few days beyond today's release date for distros to carry it.
Labels: clee, norway, thrash metal
4 Comments:
Good album. The second half especially, with that ten minute instrumental. I'm fine with the At the Gates-ish vocals.
It's out on Candlelight in North America tomorrow.
About tonal/melodic thrash, you seem to be considering the german style to be 'true thrash' for some reason, ignoring both all the american melodic bands and the mentioned speed metal or metal blade stuff. It's a bit sacrilegious because if you do that it's like saying scene legends Overkill aren't a thrash band!
The ambitious chord progressions or mostly chromatic stuff is the 'punk, faster' german side that rapidly grew into what we consider death metal today. Not every bona fide thrash metal band played like this. Thrash was also just pissed off faster NWOBHM with leather jeans and bulletbelts. Once, when the scene was far too segmented and picky about definitions, it considered the fast melodic and neoclassically influenced stuff to be speed metal and the more savage stuff to be thrash, but that distinction has faded away with time, and with good reason since not two people could agree where to put early Megadeath.
Another note: be wary of saying something is atonal, when in reality it just utilizes a bit more chromaticism than usual. Slayer are of this type, they play minor scale stuff with a lot of added accidentals between the proper intervals, but that doesn't make them atonal. An atonal piece of music pays special attention in destabilizing the tonal center of the piece, like say, Gorguts do on their record Obscura. Slayer have only one really atonal aspect to their music, which is their chaotic 'every fret' solos, and they still usually start and end on the tonal. The actual songs are very tonally grounded, and usually simple E stuff(disregarding downtuning the instruments). Even ambitious thrash bands like Metallica, most of their stuff is on E. It would take a while for bands to actually put the chaos in the thrash metal, and when they did, voila, death metal. Properly atonal and 'what the hell is going on' and everything. Thrash metal is just pissed off NWOBHM, with a punk attitude (NWOBHM already had a musical punk influence) most of the time.
You seem to suffer from a pretty narrow and IMO inaccurate view of this particular genre which I again can only chalk up to not enough research? If you're going on gut feeling on what thrash metal used to be, it may very well be that your gut isn't telling you the same story it told most thrashers of the time. Maybe Andrew from aversion who really loves thrash can also illuminate for us, but I'm pretty certain there might be a hole in your metal knowledge!
The song you posted totally classifies as thrash metal on this metal detector, but they're not my cup of tea because I feel it a pretty 'limp' execution. This doesn't register as very propelled on the visceral level, really, kinda formulaic, and the generic singer hurts it.
Yes, you're right in that I should clarify in my use of the word "atonal." I'm coming from the angle that if a band is "playing in E" and throwing Phrygian, Dorian, and every other mode into the pot plus chromatics - to me, that feels atonal, but, you're right, that isn't technically atonal.
I grew up on Bay Area thrash, actually. I'm a fan of the various regions of '80s thrash - Bay Area, NY, Germany, assorted places in between - and this stuff hits none of those buttons. It tries, and some of the notes are there, but the feeling isn't there. I only put one clip up, which I felt was the best shorter song on the album, but if you hear the whole thing, maybe you'll hear when I come from.
I passed on this to review for Live 4 Metal and gave it to Joe Florez. Later, I learned that Emperor alum Faust apparently does the drums. I just couldn't get past the stupid band name. Maybe I should give them another try...
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