Stephen
With only 15 years of age when they launched their ferocious EP, 'Mountains of Madness', Diamond Plate was observed by many as the next generation classic thrash successor and eventually landed a deal with Earache to release their full-length debut, 'Generation Why?', in August this year. Many claimed that their sound borrowed heavily from Metallica's early days, and I second that opinion, especially in tracks like 'Pull The Trigger' or 'Casualty of War' where you can hear Hammett's solo style and also Hetfield rhythm pattern.
The old-school crushing riffs and Jon Macak's death-metal-like harsh vocal that wrapped the title track's arrangement is bringing up a huge exclamation mark that Diamond Plate is ready to challenge the veteran. 'Pull The Trigger', with Macak's hellish scream and classic thrash riffs, definitely one of their strongest point here, but if you ask me which one is the best, I'll say check out the sixth track, 'Relativity'. With 6 minutes duration, the song is like a gigantic wave of galloping rhythm, nasty riffs, and a perfect set of headbangable tune. 'Casualty of War' comes second, hats off to Konrad Kupiec, an extremely young axeman with such an exceptional solo delivery.
'Fool's Paradise' is like a B-side of Metallica's black album, 'Waste of Life' walks with a dynamic rhythm, a brilliant verse, but slightly choppy on the chorus, still a great one though. Couple of average tunes and 'At The Mountains of Madness' is brutal but beautiful. Again, the Metallica influence is obvious here. In my opinion, Jon Macak's aggressive vocal added a different flavor to the music, especially if you dig thrash/death style, but to me, probably better if he exploit his normal singing style and combine both.
This teenage thrash attack is surprisingly good. They know how to put out lots of tempo-changing structure to their music, and swarmed with lots of incinerating solos. The song composition are mostly strong though the room for improvement is still vast, I bet they can come up better with next releases. A very talented band, a very good album with at least 85% of score in hand, well done boys!