Список групп Thrash Metal In Malice's Wake The Thrashening

2008 saw the release of In Malice’s Wake (IMW) debut titled Eternal Nightfall and it had already garnered positive reviews even back then. In 2011, the Aussie band honed their skills even more but also decided to make their sound more incisive and violent by stripping it down as much as possible so that all the rage that Thrash Metal is about would remain. And only the rage.

The Thrashening is the result of this hard work and overall I think they can wear a proud smile and say "mission complete". When people start counting their eggs at the end of 2011, there’s a good chance that IMW’s sophomore release will rank high in Thrash Metal Best Albums along Havok’s latest.

So what does it sound to get back to the basics of Thrash Metal? In case you were wondering, try to picture IMW revisiting such classics like Metallica's Kill Em All with a more powerful and modern sound. The opener "Endless Possession" , for instance, is very reminiscent of Whiplash, one of Metallica’s undisputed classic songs, but Shaun's vocals are even more aggressive than Hetfield's. I could go track by track but it'd take away some of the fun of discovering the album by yourself. Let’s just say that sometimes we meet the rage of major acts like DRI or Vio-Lence and I personally very much appreciated their “Thrash” choruses that had some early Suicidal Tendencies to their songs.

Overall you should expect the kind of West Californian Coast Thrash Metal that’s always going fast with very sharp riffing, probably not as fast as Darkness Descends or The Ultraviolence but on par with Eternal Nightmare or Victims of Deception. There are a few mids here and there that will try to snap your neck but overall it’s mostly aggression on the menu. Props also to the guys behind the mix of The Thrashening, because every instrument is well balanced and the bass, damn the bass, is crispy as hell. It sounds modern, true, but not your usual “soulless” modern sound that, unfortunately, has been killing Metal in general lately.

If I were to voice anything that may seem like some kind of minor complaint, I’d probably mention a couple tracks (at the very least The Crawling Chaos comes to mind) which I believe are too long to retain their impact on the listener. But hey, that’s a good thing, because such an album which may well end up as everyone’s favorite in 2011, shows that there's still some (not much) room for improvement and that IMW’s career may well be only starting now.