#harlott

Harlott- "Extinction" The Slayer influence is beyond obvious on this one. Haha. Sounds like a killer record.

Harlott live.

Terrifier - Weapons Of Thrash Destruction Canadian thrash band Terrifier is the kind of band that I don’t have a whole lot of things to say about, for better or worse. That tends to happen with some albums  that I review, and that was part of why I stepped away for so long; I got burned out from writing about boring, middle of the road, and forgettable albums that I hardly had anything to say about. I love talking about music, but I love talking about things that I’m passionate about, versus albums that don’t give me anything to work with. That’s why a band like Terrifier frustrates me a bit. They’re one of those bands that if you look at their album covers, and you know beforehand that they’re a thrash band (which the title of the subject of today’s review makes very clear), you know what you’re getting -- speedy, fun, and party-loving thrash. The title alone of this album should tell you right off the bat that they don’t take themselves too seriously, and they really don’t, which is something I love about thrash. I love how a lot of bands don’t take themselves too seriously, especially a band like Municipal Waste for a good example, who definitely doesn’t take themselves seriously at all. A lot of their songs are about beer and partying, which are two thrash staples, and Terrifier is sort of the same way. While it’s not a bad thing for a band to be fun, carefree, and have a relatively generic sound that doesn’t do anything you haven’t heard before, there becomes a point where you want more. Municipal Waste has the issue of making the same album over and over, but they make it work by injecting slight variations into that sound to make it work in their favor. They’re also an important band in revitalizing and bringing thrash to peoples’ attention again, especially in the early 00s, but Terrifier, more specifically their 2017 sophomore album Weapons Of Thrash Destruction, doesn’t do that. I’ve recently gone back to this album after hearing them years ago on Bandcamp, because I wanted to see how this album has held up over the last five years, or if I still enjoyed it. To be honest, I still really like this record, but I have to admit that it has some glaring problems that prevent me from really loving, which is namely that it’s just generic thrash. If that’s what you’re looking for, and sometimes I am in the mood for that, this will work wonders. These guys definitely love the genre, and they tick a lot of boxes for the genre as well, including riffs aplenty, flashy and fun solos, vocals that remind me a lot of the 80s Bay Area scene, and very party-heavy sense of lyricism (there’s a song called “Drunk As Fuck” and it’s one of the best songs on the album), as well as a lot of songs about 80s horror and sci-fi movies. All of that is great, and it’s executed very well, but at the end of the day, there’s just nothing here that I haven’t heard from other bands, let alone done better, unfortunately. Terrifier has a cool sound, but they fade away into the background of thrash, only because there’s not much to their sound that you can’t get from other bands and then some. Don’t get me wrong, this album is really good, even great in spots, and I love it, but with the thrash bands that we’ve got nowadays, this album falls short in the respect of just being a generic thrash album that’s done relatively well, and... That’s it. I guess if you want a no frills thrash album, you’ll probably really enjoy this as well, but that’s why I go to a band like Municipal Waste. Not that these guys aren’t competent, but they don’t offer anything that other bands don’t. It’s executed relatively well, but not to the point where I can forgive them being generic. That’s why I don’t have a lot to say about this album directly. If you love thrash, you’ll love this album, and that’s not a bad thing, but it’s not incredibly interesting, nor does it make for a compelling and analytical review, either. Good stuff, but it’s also a very generic record, so if you’re expecting the second coming of thrash, you’ll be disappointed.

Harlott - Detritus Of The Final Age The last of the thrash albums that I decided to revisit and/or check from 2020 that I’ve been talking about over the last few years is upon us, and that’s the new album from Australian thrash band Harlott, and their fourth album, Detritus Of The Final Age. I got on board back in 2017 when they released their third album, Extinction, and what raised my eyebrow is that they’re signed to Metal Blade. That’s one of my favorite record labels, especially when you consider that founder Brian Slagel is the guy responsible for bringing together Metallica (it’s a truly fascinating story, and it’s in the book that he wrote about the story of Metal Blade, but that’s for another day), so I was really excited about that. That album ended up being good, not necessarily great. Like many of these bands, they understand what works about thrash, and they clearly love the genre, but they don’t do anything to transcend it. Bands like Power Trip and Municipal Waste are definitely not the most forward-thinking bands, either, but they have that something extra that sets them apart from the slew of generic thrash bands. Harlott didn’t have that extra special ingredient, so I wondered what would happen with their next album. I didn’t remember it well, as I only listened to these thrash albums that I’ve been talking about a couple of times in 2020, but I was curious to see how this one held up. Well, Detritus Of The Final Age is a good album, let me make that clear, but it suffers from the same problems that these other albums have as well, namely that it doesn’t know what kind of thrash album it wants to be. It really has the same problem as Hazzerd’s Delirium, which was a really cool album and had some cool songs, but at the end of the day, I didn’t know if it was trying to be a fun crossover thrash album, a politically and socially thrash album that took a lot of note from crossover and Bay Area thrash of the 80s, or if it wanted to be a progressive thrash album, as a couple of songs were a bit longer, weirder, and didn’t fit the rest of the record’s tone. The same can be said here, but really in just the overall sound, not quite with its lyricism. These guys are pretty politically charged, too, and they’re nothing special, but they make it work fine. It’s just that this album is weird, because a lot of the songs are more accessible and shorter thrash tunes, the album randomly gives us a couple of eight-minute And Justice For All type songs that feel more experimental and progressive, versus straightforward and to the point. What’s even stranger is that the album has one of those songs as the penultimate track, and a Cannibal Corpse is what actually closers the album out. If anything, I don’t usually mind when a band has a really long song to close the album out, but the Cannibal Corpse cover is a strange closing song, since it’s really fun, fast, loud. and to the point. It’s a great cover of “The Time To Kill Is Now,” but it doesn’t make sense to close the album. The album is still really solid, but those two longer songs sort of kill the momentum of the album, where they stop the album’s fun and loose sound in its tracks. They’re interesting songs, but they’re really confusing. Because this album is also 49 minutes long, I haven’t been going back to this one much. It’s really good, but not great. If you’re a fan of thrash, I’d still check it out, and their cover of “The Time To Kill Is Now” is very good (it’s almost a death-thrash sound, which is very different from their Bay Area-inspired sound, but still a lot of fun). Hazzerd had the same problem on their last album, too; I really loved the one really fun and dumb song they had, but the rest of the album was very inconsistent, and this album is the same way. I like what they do, it’s just I don’t know what they’re doing, or what they’re trying to do. I don’t know, I think it’s worth a listen, but there are better and more consistent thrash records that are worth hearing. Not to say this isn’t worth your time, but unless you’re a huge thrash fan and you’re a sucker for any band you can get your hands on, you probably won’t like this. I don’t even really love it, but all things considered, it’s still good stuff. The performances are solid, the songwriting is good, and they know what they’re doing what it comes to their love for thrash, but what kind of sound they’re going for is beyond me.

Havok - V Thrash metal isn’t usually known for its lyricism, but it usually has two camps that the lyrics fall into for most bands -- stupid and fun or self-righteous and politically charged. Some bands make either style work very well; Metallica was known for having a lot of relatively politically charged songs in the 80s, and they all work very well, just as much as a band like Municipal Waste is known for having stupid, partygoing, and fun lyrics about pizza and beer, but not every band can make either style work. I like a lot of thrash bands, and most of the time, their lyrics are very inconsequential, since I don’t listen to thrash for its lyricism most of the time (in some cases, I enjoy the lyrics a lot, especially with a band like Municipal Waste, who makes partying an artform), but there are a few bands whose lyrics really frustrate me, and Denver band Havok is one of those bands. Let me preface by saying that I really enjoy Havok; my first experience with them was hearing Conformicide in 2017, and that’s a pretty damn good thrash record. It’s way too long, but it’s still good. I really enjoy that record, but one of my biggest problems with it was how heavy-handed and on the nose their lyrics often were. Havok’s lyrics pretty much are of the “wake up sheeple” type, where they say something like “the media is lying to you,” which is what one of the songs on their last album was about, and they make it sound like such a profound idea that’s no one’s ever said before, so it comes off as very preachy, pretentious, and irritating. It’s one of the main things that held me back from enjoying them fully, even if their vocalist has a great scream, and their guitarwork is among the best of the new wave of thrash bands, especially when it’s really hard to ignore their lyrics. That’s part of why I didn’t get too excited about their latest record, V, from 2020, but that’s also due in part to where I just didn’t listen to a lot of new albums from that year. Havok aren’t really one of my personal favorite thrash bands, thanks to the aforementioned issues I have with them, but there are the few things I mentioned that I like about them, too, so I’ve been wanting to listen to V a bit more in detail. I’ve been listening to a lot of thrash lately, and I completely forgot that a few thrash bands I really like released albums in 2020, including Warbringer, Harlott, and this band. I’ve spent most of the week listening to V, so what do I think about it? Honestly, it’s not much different from Conformicide, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing. The main difference, and the one thing I really appreciate about this record, is that it’s a lot shorter. My other main problem with that record is just how long and bloated it was. That album was around an hour in length, and for a thrash record, that’s overkill (pun intended). It wasn’t even like they were going for an And Justice For All type of sound, either, it was just a generic Bay Area thrash record. That’s what V is, too, but it’s leaner and meaner, so to speak. With that said, though, the lyrics are just as irritating this time around, but they’re not overtly grating, either. A few songs, especially early in the album, kind of test my patience, such as “Fear Campaign,” but the song itself isn’t bad. It’s just the lyrics aren’t anything worth writing home about, considering that they’re still the really pretentious “wake up sheeple” type of dribble that they think is more profound than it really is. I have nothing against politically charged lyricism, especially thrash, but this just isn’t good. That’s my main gripe with this ban; their lyrics are really bad, even when I kind of agree with what they’re saying. It’s just that they have no sense of subtlety in their writing, it’s like they hit over the head with what they’re trying to say, and they act like no one has ever heard that before. There’s a song in the album that talks about the fictional “war on drugs,” which if you know your history is a political “movement” that was very racist and classist in its tone and execution, in which lawmakers and law enforcement tried to get illegal drugs off the streets by targeting people of color and low-income neighborhoods, versus going after white people or certain drug companies for getting people addicted to certain kinds of drugs. It’s a very interesting and important thing to make a song about, but all they say about it, at least in a single line, is that “they” want you to be addicted and they don’t want to go after drug companies, because those companies make money. That’s true, but people already know this, so what else do you have to say? Their somewhat pompous attitude to these ideas kind of turns me off, but at the same time, if you can tune the lyrics out, the instrumentation is very good. The guitarwork in particular is great on this thing, and there are a lot of awesome solos here, but this album more or less goes into a generic Bay Area sound. A couple of songs lean more into the longer side of things, but it’s not a more “progressive” sound, either. If you want some stellar instrumentation, and a really solid vocalist, especially if you can get past the obnoxious lyrics that don’t actually say anything interesting (even though they really want you to think they do), you can have some fun with this. It’s only 46 minutes, which is about 12 minutes shorter than their last album, so that’s a huge plus. I’m glad that this record is shorter, because an hour-long thrash record isn’t needed unless you’re one of the most important and influential bands in the genre, so it makes for a quick enough listen. I don’t know, folks, I like these guys, but this record is what I expected, more or less. It’s a good album, I enjoy it, but it still suffers from the main problems that I’ve had with them. Even with the quicker runtime, this album is still just another thrash record, but it’s done relatively well. They know what they’re doing, it’s not like they go above and beyond, or make this a no frills, straight to the point kind of album, like what Power Trip and Municipal Waste are known for, but it’s good enough. If you really want some good thrash to check out, you can’t go wrong with it, but just be aware of the lyricism on here. It might just be something that bothers me, but I’ve never been a fan of lyrics like that. I think they’re incredibly obnoxious, but if you look past them, there’s a pretty good thrash record there.

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