| 78 78% | |
|
Summary
|
%
|
|---|---|
| : 0 (0 votes) | |
Literally the perfect album title.
Are you one of those people who believe that thrash is best left without much outside influence or progressive tendencies? Your favorite meal at lunch break is served in a steel cabin with Kreator, Destruction, and the vast amount of similar brands of the second row rumbling through the speakers? A pinch of later Artillery harmonies is fine, as long as the lead melodies don’t go overboard and the street cred remains unharmed?
Then FTLATA is your kind of record. Right off the bat, this album delivers relentless aggression and furious energy without pause. A very old-school approach but with a decently modern production to boot, the razors and nails were thrown at you are pretty sharp and deliver some proper damage to both skin and skull. Lead guitars are serviceable and add a few intricate layers to the bludgeoning, but this kind of thrash lives and breathes through the rhythm guitars and their riffs being spat at you in rapid succession. Fortunately, this is FTLATA‘s greatest strength and the amount of solid headbanging and pit material is substantial.
Those vocals are of course delivered in an appropriate manner, meaning you should expect a guy accumulating the influences of Schmier & friends, but with less of a screechy, nasal type of voice, which is obviously the perfect fit for such a heavy take on classic riff barrage. A notable difference to the known a-list celebs is the prominent Austro-German accent that gels very well with this reviewer’s battle-hardened (Austrian) ears.
That said, Mortal Strike‘s output falls into many of the same traps that these worship thrash albums usually tend to fall into: it’s heavy, it’s fast, it’s catchy, and it grooves when it’s supposed to, but it ultimately lacks innovation and a true identity of some sort. Even with this review being written in light of the recent anniversary edition in hand, the same words would’ve been appropriate for the original 2014 release run. If such worries don’t cross your mind while reading this, feel free to add a few points to your individual score, because what this group is set out to do, they do perfectly well, crushing several modern thrash bands (and quite a few of today’s incarnations of the old guard as well) with ease due to this material having some genuinely solid songwriting qualities and a few golden moments to it.
If you’re still not sure whether For the Loud and the Aggressive is a CD for your tastes or only suitable for those smelly old farts defending true metal, check out the highlights tracks “Against the Wall” and “Storm the Gates” for a perfect representation and summary of what this record is about. As for me, I can thoroughly recommend this if there’s some craving for a swift, but dirty ol’ beheading in charming, heartwarming ways that only unadulterated thrash metal can offer. Let ’em tanks roll!
PS: The 10 Year Anniversary Edition comes in a nicely crafted package with some decent bonus live material (songs off this album), albeit now with a different singer at the helm – so I didn’t want that to have an effect on the overall score.
https://www.facebook.com/MortalStrikeOfficial
If you really would like to support Antichrist, you can just Share our article.
You can also support Antichrist by sending a couple bucks to cover some webhosting expenses. =>> PayPal
