Vim Fuego
Anyone with more than a passing interest in metal will know thrash metal died in the early 1990s. Why did it die? There were a number of reasons, but really, it fucking well deserved to!
It’s hard to tell exactly why thrash became so cancerously mutated. Bands started doing stupid shit, diluting the music with things like silly slapped bass and funky beats, or aiming for the mainstream with gutless power ballads. There was experimentation, social causes, a decline in pace, and a similar decline in quality. Perhaps thrash became an oversaturated market, filled with sub-standard crap. Maybe it was because the musicians involved in it lost interest as the genre had become too restrictive and straight-jacketed. Whatever the reasons, most of the big names abandoned it. Metallica, Megadeth and Anthrax all slowed down, Slayer fucked off for a long while, Exodus fell apart, Kreator changed directions, Testament released some sub-par crap, and countless other bands “discovered” their love for acoustic ballads, radio-friendly rock rhythms, and shorter hair. There was no new good stuff coming out.
A few bands like Overkill soldiered on bravely, and the odd new killer band like Strapping Young Lad, popped up, but by and large, thrash lived on mainly through its past glories, like “Reign in Blood”, “Master of Puppets”, “Pleasure to Kill” and “Bonded by Blood”. So what was a lover of hard edged metal to do? There were a couple of options. The first, and probably best, was to start exploring the now established death metal scene, or look into the emergence of black metal. There was the less enticing option of putting the brain out of gear and following the smelly sulking masses of angsty teens into the grunge market, or the even less appetising moronicism of nu-metal.
And then, here we are, almost through the second decade of the 21st century, and thrash is back with… well, not really a vengeance, but it sounds like it’s fucking well supposed to again!
Yep, so press play on Hazzerd’s “Misleading Evil”, and you instantly get a pounding thrash of drums, a crashing riff of guitars, and away you go, speeding through the first track “The Tendencies of a Madman”. It is just like it is 1989 again. This is better than 1989 though. In those days, a band needed a pretty good record deal to get even a half decent studio sound, and even then it wasn’t guaranteed. Check Dark Angel’s “Leave Scars” for a prime example. What we get here from Hazzerd is crisp, clear guitars, with the right amount of crunch and zip so you can fully appreciate the riffs, and the shredding solos. The rhythm section is tight and energetic. Drummer Dylan "Shoes" Westendorp is also the band’s vocalist, and the dude can fuckin’ sing! Imagine Megadeth if they were still a young and vital band with something still to prove, possibly with Russ Anderson from Forbidden or Bobby Blitz from Overkill on vocals. Westendorp has the right mix of melody with a rough edge.
Often a telling test for a thrash metal band was how well they could hold the listener’s interest with an instrumental. Some, like Megadeth’s “Into The Lungs of Hell” and Nuclear Assault’s “Game Over” were excellent, while others like Death Angel’s “The Ultra-Violence” and Flotsam and Jetsam’s “The Jones” just get bloody tedious after a while. Here, the title track is an instrumental, and far from being boring, it is a highlight amongst highlights. No track stands out much from the others, because all are outstanding.
If you long for the golden days of thrash metal, check out “Misleading Evil”. It is a nostalgia trip and fresh and new at the same time. It has one of those Ed Repka-esque covers (a bloke called Andrei Bouzikov deserves the credit for it). This is fun and exciting, and a bit edgy, just like thrash metal was always meant to be. Metalcore pretenders, please take note: metal and hardcore were combined decades ago. It is called thrash fuckin’ metal. THIS is how it is supposed to sound.