There are some bands who should just quit. It’s not that I don’t enjoy early works of Kreator, for example, but most recent efforts (despite being in at least two writers’ top 10’s of 2009), to me, just sound tired and as though any good ideas they had long since left the building.
Au contraire, there are bands who have been around since the thrash metal heyday and yet still are able to offer something that sounds fresh and relevant and that sounds downright killer whether you’re 14 or 40. Along with Razor, Exciter and Infernal Majesty these came out of Canada with their debut album in 1984, released a handful of albums and then disappeared for a while with their last album, Apocalypse Inside, coming out in 1993.
17 years on and The Ones I Condemn is a very worthy comeback album. It comes out of the speakers oozing power, and after an intro that brings to mind the superb opening to ‘Alice In Hell’ by fellow Canucks Annihilator, you soon discover this has enough fury and vehemence to make up for lost time. This album is packed with excellent riffage, some rather nice drum work and ultimately some well-crafted and dynamic song structures that some of their peers clearly lack these days. Originality isn’t high on the agenda of course, and I find this has a fair bit in common with the Germans; the vocals on ‘Give Me Justice’ have that hardness to them that brings to mind Tankard mainman Andreas "Gerre" Geremia, while on ‘Hiroshima’ there’s more of a Mille Petrozza rasp to the delivery. ‘The Devil’s Martyr’ gives a nod toward the flag of hate; this one doesn’t mess around making any kind of threats and simply launches straight in to the chaos of the pit. There’s a rather hellish texture to the solo guitar work in the middle of the track that borders on death metal, and ‘Desolation Alive’ is another fine example of such.
Of course one thing to remember is their past isn’t quite so linear; they’ve previously released albums that fall closer into black and death metal territory and to anyone hearing the band for the first time this isn’t going to be too hard to imagine. ‘Tetragrammation’ comes in with a rather winding, slow paced introductory passage and flares out into a monstrously heavy wall of sound while the intricate guitars lend a kind of blackened sense of foreboding to the mix. I am drawn to the melodic guitar work on ‘Give Me Justice’ which is borrowed straight from the textbook of Mike Amott.
Production really does the music justice as well and engineer Darius Szczepaniak has done a fine job of giving this a beefy sound. To finish off, this is an album that belongs on the shelf of any thrash metal fan. This is one album I shall not condemn.
http://www.myspace.com/sacrificecanada
