Review Summary: The wild dogs of Aachen might be collared but they still bite your throat if you go too close.
There is nothing harder than to make a follow-up to the record that made your name regardless of musical genre. Nearly every band or artist has that album, that point which everybody sees as the creative highlight and to which every other record gets compared to. The German thrash metal scene is no different from this as well: Kreator has “Pleasure to Kill”, Sodom has “Agent Orange”, Destruction has “Eternal Devastation” and Holy Moses has their second album “Finished With the Dogs”. The way of following the masterstroke differs with every band: Some try to repeat the successful formula, others try some different variations, and others do a 180 degree turn because they know they can’t achieve the same thing twice. Holy Moses took the second option.
To understand what makes The New Machine of Liechtenstein different yet good at the same time, one has to look from where the band took the next step. To say “Finished With the Dogs” was an improvement over their debut is an understatement. It is an album that almost sounds like if it was recorded by a completely different band (especially given it came out only a year after “Queen of Siam”). The furious, breakneck riffing, the rough guitar sound, the machine-gun drumming and Sabina Classen’s crazed banshee-like vocals showed a band who found their musical sound as well as taking that sound to its peak in an album that has the violent intensity of a rabid animal. Thus we arrive to the point that I mentioned in my first paragraph: By setting themselves so high, it’s very easy to disappoint, especially if you want every future release to sound just like Finished. Well “The New Machine of Liechtenstein” might not be the sequel to that record, but it still manages to be a competent and strong thrash metal album.
Of course the music here is still thrash but the approach is different. Instead of utter frenzy, it’s more restrained, laid-back and controlled. The mid-tempo riffs, song structuring and boxy guitar tone is more reminiscent of US thrash than their German peers. The opener “Near Dark”, “Def Con II” or “Strange Deception” sound like if they just came of an old-school Anthrax or Nuclear Assault with Sabina’s voice being the only difference. And that’s not to say these tracks are bad by any stretch if the imagination. They plod along with reasonable force and a decent amount of catchiness, with guitarist Andy Classen and drummer Uli Kusch carrying the entire album with profession and precision.
However the album almost without expectation improves whenever the band decides to harken back to the faster and more maniac side of their music. Songs like “Panic”, “The Brood” and “State: Catatonic” have a much higher and well-needed level of energy with speedy yet surgical riffing that pumps up the listener as well. “SSP” is easily a personal highpoint for me as it’s chaotic and crossover thrash like nature is the closest the band gets to of musically revisiting “Finished With the Dogs”. Also these are the songs where Sabina Classen really gets to shine as her blood-thirsty witch-voice sounds less subdued than most of the record. Don’t get me wrong she is always the highpoint and a key former of Holy Moses’s sound and she manages to give a top notch performance here is as well. The only track which feels like a real misstep is “Lost in the Maze” which has slow and generic riffing without atmosphere or a good hook. Kind of a bummer ending for an otherwise very solid album.
In overall while standing in the shadow of their own, Holy Moses still knows rocks on their third record that may feel those the safe zone of their musical genre but their set of skills and songwriting proves that this zone can be both comforting and a bit dangerous sounding as well. Also with nine songs and only 36 minutes they sure as hell know how to quickly deliver their punch and not overstaying their welcome for a second.
