Devil's Gate Music
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Canadian Thrashers, ‘Terrifier’ formerly known as ‘Skull Hammer’ until 2012, when significant line-up changes prompted the decision to change the band name also, gained a lot of recognition with their ‘Destroyers of the Faith’ debut full length under their old name. With the original core members still in place; Chase Thibodeau and Rene Wilkinson along with Brent Gallant, now joined by Kyle Sheppard (ex:Artep), and Alexander Giles (ex:Titan’s Eve), they are a line-up determined to pick up and carry on from where ‘Skull Hammer’ left off .
This latest new EP, ‘Metal Or Death’, may only be three tracks, spanning a modest eleven minutes but it’s quality over quantity and a release you would happily put on repeat, it’s old school thrash with the extra added edge of speed metal and that means utterly crazy solos and they are in abundance, as well as being an total riff fest also, opening on ‘Metal or Death’, which is a crushing chunk of intense riffing from the offset, midway through there is some superb speed metal shredding coasting over the riffing and I haven’t yet mentioned the vocals which are classic Thrash styled, broad ranging and well intonated with a high degree of legibility, a perfect accompaniment.
The tempo gets faster for ‘Infernal Overdrive‘, the riffs still come at you with the same intensity, just faster, as do the lyrics, this track lives up to its title and there is also a slight technical edge to the shredding.
Final track Wretched Damnation’ has a slightly more aggressive edge to the riffing, a nice mid track drum segment before a tempo and direction change and this track also has far more than its fair share of superb solos.
Independently released ‘Metal or Death’, as well as being well written and delivered has great production, just enough polish to give a good finish to the product but not overproduced to lessen the classic edge to the sound, a win-win situation. An EP that proves less is definitely more.
Review by Jools Green
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