If you are looking for some thrash-metal with something above the normal stuff you should check out "Artillery, a high-tech thrash-metal band from Denmark. They are not that "high-tech" as I desrcibed but they are very good when it comes to technical and complexive riffing and soloing. This band is claimed to one of the top metal band during the 80's to play very advanced thrash-metal.
This album is called "By Inheritance", the album contains of course classic thrash-metal and then some great music skills on top of that. There is a lot of great, crazy and advanced riffing and soloing, the bass is in this case only rhythm based and that will say no soloing or bass filling sections. Then we have the thrash-metal drumming, there are lots of different beats and poundings, both fast and slow but mostly fast drumming. One thing that has changed very much compared to their second album "Terror Squad" is that the guitars is almost lame. In "Terror Squad" the guitars were very brutal and raw in its sound but here it just sounds so weak. One thing that makes this album a bit special is that the band has mixed their music with middle-eastern music, like these arabien sounds and strange string noises.
The band members are five persons, the first is the vocalist Flemming Ronsdorf and his odd but unique singing voice. In this album the vocals are very yell and more skilled than in previous albums. And we have the Stytzer-brothers, Michael takes care of the incredible guitar playing while the other brother, Morten takes care of the not so hearable bass but Morten is also playing guitar along with his brother. Peter Thorslund is the mian bassist of this album, Morten also play some bass but not so often. And so we have the drummer Carston Nielson, a very skilled drummer, not the best but he is very good at drumming.
We jump right on to the song section where I'm going to desribe the songs so you know how they sound like, sort of. We start with a short filler song, "7:00 From Tashkent" starts with some normal eastern sounds and later the band kicks in and play these eastern inspired riff lines. The filler song is the worst song I've heard yet, skip this song if you buy the cd or downloading the cd. "Khomaniac" starts off with some eastern sounding riffs. The song gets more heaviness and thrashiness, and the guitar solo in this song is awesome, it sounds like it is a mix between Kirk Hammett and Marty Friedmann. "Beneath The Clay (R.I.P)" starts with very fast and complexive drumming, the guitar enters and playes also a complexive line with tunes from the east. The song is more thrash-metal but it is not catchy, this is one of the album worst songs in my opinion. "By Inheritance" is my own favorite of this album, the song starts with more influences from the east but it sounds pretty good here, the song is very catchy and has alot of great riffs and shredds, a technical song were Flemming's voice does a good job. "Bombfood" starts with a quite dramatic intro and some calm acoustic section, the song increases in speed and the main riff is really good. The song feels a bit deppressive and is one of my favorites, and now take a few seconds to recover from this section because there are five more songs to check out.
Are you ready now? Good, this part is soon finished, "Don't Believe" sounds like a ballad mixed song, the song starts with calm and melodic acoustic intro. The song gets more loud and dramatic for a while and then it comes back to the melodic part, the vocals are not so good in the calm parts though. "Life In Bondage" is a very chaotic song and I think that this is the only song that feels thrashiest, the song is not catchy to me and does not grab my attention that well. "Equal At First" has some really good advanced riffing which are quite catchy, the song is quite heavy and the guitar solo is great. "Razamanaz" is a cover from a well-known rock band and that band is called "Nazareth" I believe. This song really rocks actually, mixing thrash elements with the original sounds very good, also one of my favorite songs but the vocals can seem like a pain in the a** to others. "Back In The Trash" has some slighlty catchy riffs, nothing special about it really, it doesn't sound interesting to me though.
Done, this was the best I could come up with about this review and I hope that it has been helpful and enjoying. There was some things that really disappointed me, the guitars were not as brutal and heavy as in their second album and the middle-eastern theme ruined most of the songs in my opinion. But it was good to see that the bands tries to experiment with different themes and not hammers on with the same basic stuff, but this was not so enjoying to my ears. I would recommend this album to thrashers who wants to find different styles of thrash-metal and of course to other metal heads as well, the only thing that can be a setback for this band in the vocals when people will listen to them the first time.
PROS
+ Awesome guitar technique (riffs, solos and rhythm)
+ The vocals are a bit improved
+ It was smart by the band to mix other types of culture music
CONS
- The vocals does not have the same uniqueness
- The middle-eastern notes does annoy you sometimes
- The raw and thick guitar work is gone (in this case this album)
RECOMMENDED TRACKS
-- By Inheritance
-- Don't Believe
-- Razamanaz
-- Equal At First
Overall album rating will be: 3.5/5
