published January 2010

Thirty years and thrashing harder than ever: a chat with Overkill

With the rise of the new wave of thrash, which has taken the world by storm in the past two years or so, it becomes easy to forget that some of the earliest thrash bands are still going strong. Enter Overkill: old-school thrashers with a long history.

 

KEEL - Streets Of Rock & Roll (Frontiers/Riot)

If they had released this 25 years ago maybe KEEL would have followed in the footsteps of the great hair metal gods we all know and love!

 

KEEL - The Right to Rock: 25th Anniversary Edition (Frontiers/Riot)

I sure as hell wish this is what my parents were playing for me 25 years ago instead of what they actually made me endure!
Release Date: 
29 Jan 2010 (All day)

 

Neverborn “Decimator” launch @ Villa (Perth), 22 Jan 2010

Neverborn launch their third studio effort atop an outstanding lineup of local talent. Fuck we’ve got a talented bunch over here on the West Coast.

My role as reviewer has doomed me to a life of desperately trying to get to the gig before the first band starts, and more often than not failing miserably.

Se Bon Ki Ra - One Thousand Ways To Die (Independent)

Like your groove metal in the vein of say Lamb Of God? Well, Se Bon Ki Ra delivers a five-shot knockout of groove laden metal that will pound your ears into submission.

As with a lot of countries around the world, the metal scene in Australia is thriving quite well and gets bigger with many new bands from different metal walks of life arriving on the scene.

Eluveitie - Everything Remains (As It Never Was) (Nuclear Blast/Riot)

Describing an album as "perfect" is pretty much par for the course in press releases but for once, they aren't far wrong
Release Date: 
19 Feb 2010 (All day)

Picture the scene: Irish folksters Clannad are sitting around enjoying a nice vegan meal of carrots and soil when suddenly the doorbell rings.

Immortal - All Shall Fall (Nuclear Blast/Riot)

One can hardly accuse the raw satanic power of Immortal for being the sole cause of stagnation in black metal, but in All Shall Fall, their nervous dip of the toe into the icy waters of progression sounds admirable, but dated.

Taking seven years off from a passion either renews it with verve or kills it completely.

Six Feet Under - Graveyard Classics 3 (Metal Blade/Riot)

Chris Barnes and co put down the bong for just long enough to throw out another volume of fun covers.

Six Feet Under is nothing if not predictable – but I strongly suspect that’s much of their appeal.

Throwdown - Deathless (Nuclear Blast/Riot)

"What fresh madness is this?", I hear you cry, "a hardcore band on MetalasFuck.net??". Fear not my friends, for this album is as hardcore as the Pope is Muslim.

There are certain hardcore bands that you can rely on to produce music that gets your arms flailing and your teeth loosened - Agnostic Front, Sick Of It All,

Headhunter D.C. - God's Spreading Cancer (Ibex Moon)

It's really hard to properly enjoy this sort of death metal. It's not nearly melodic or riff-centric enough to be memorable or have any sort of staying power. But, at the same time, it's nowhere near brutal or crazy enough to really get your blood flowing or give the impression that the band completely goes off live.

It's the sort of stuff which tends to get peddled as "classic old-school death metal", forgetting the very things that made the best bands of that first wave out of Tampa, Florida so great: boundar