We paired up two bands with names starting with T today. Not the only similarity, as both bands will also deliver us a juicy portion of melodic Death-Thrash to enjoy. Next to T.A.N.K from France, we’ve also got Trendkill Method, not the first contribution from Latvia on this site, but after Frailty, long ago, definitely the first in a very long time.

[Our new team addition, 'Danimal or Buffalo' from New Zealand - which means you can call him a kiwi - drops in today with his second album review, after he first reviewed Dawn of the Sociopath of Portugal's Echidna. He stays in Portugal for now, as he continues with a influence-rich piece of Groove Metal by We Are Killing Ourselves, a.k.a. W.A.K.O. Very much worth your time!]

Yet again Portugal surprises me. We Are Killing Ourselves have produced a bone cruncher of an album, titled The Road of Awareness. This album surprised me with all sorts of elements shining through, from slow crunching chug Metalcore style to fast palm mutes and big sounding lead solos. It all passes by in a matter of seconds.

[Today marks a special day, as it’s the day at which our new guest writer ‘Danimal or Buffalo’ drops in his first album review. He took care of the latest work of Portugal’s Echidna for us, and might I say he’s been particularly adept at describing what he hears. I’ve listened to some of the album and can say nothing else that he’s spot on! Welcome aboard DoB!]

Well let’s just start off by saying what a pleasant surprise it was to get this in my inbox! Echidna was great from the moment I pressed play till the moment the album ended. Hailing from Portugal, comes raw fast crunching chug with plenty string bends in tune perfectly and executed brilliantly. Dawn of the Sociopath is the follow-up to the band’s highly acclaimed 2008 debut album, Insidious Awakening. From what I have read, the band spent three years putting this album together and that definitely has been time well spent.

They say good things take time and this is proof. It seems as if they have poured their blood, sweat and tears into this recording and it has paid off well, with the lead guitarist really grabbing me the most.

Guess what, been looking about a bit and it turns out Mastodon is playing The Wiltern the day after Asking Alexandria. If you like both – and you’ve got cash – you can turn it into a nice long music-rich weekend in LA or something. In support for Mastodon are The Dillinger Escape Plan and Red Fang. Not the least of Metal! You can get the Mastodon tickets here.

And finally, because we never like to not give you something to listen to, here’s the track Curl of the Burl from Mastodon’s The Hunter album, a little something for those that missed the full The Hunter album stream we covered the other day. The track’s music video was recently published on YT, so this may be new to others too.

From Germany today, Incise. The five-piece from Trier recently released its debut record From the Crypt They Rise. I’m hearing all kinds of stuff, but it’s mostly got this crunchy, this inherent loudness that is so characteristic of Old-school Death. But it isn’t that.

So, if it’s not Old-school Death, what is it?! Truth is, I don’t know for sure. It definitely falls under the broad moniker of Death Metal of course, but then what. I don’t really think it matters to be honest, but what it reminds me of most is Kataklysm and the likes. You do the math from there.

By the way, there are free goodies – very good goodies in fact – at the end of this review, so make sure you check inside and follow the link we’ll give you!

Canada’s five-piece Death Metal outfit Blood Drunk are a hard bunch to gather info on. What we do know is that they don’t sound like the Children of Bodom album that shares their name, they have a female vocalist that can hang with the big boys and they have one album, titled Machine Made Flesh, that is available for free download at their Bandcamp page.

“Of all the first-time-out-of-the-country concerts you could’ve gone to, you HAD to pick Brazilian Thrash in Norway”, a friend of mine exclaimed. And while it seems an odd match-up, Oslo did seem the most logical place for legendary Thrash Metallers Sepultura to close their European tour for their latest album Kairos. Norway is renowned as one of the Metal Meccas, and a band over 20 years old must pay homage every so often to the country.

More bands should write their lyrics in German. I mean that. As a language it’s got immense poetic, vivacious characteristics and moreover it just sounds powerful in a brutal sort of way. Why else do you think all those American war movies contain so many German enemy soldiers?! In any case, it’s a perfect match for Metal. Scharbock from the state of Baden-Württemberg, Germany understood this perfectly. Or perhaps they’re just proud of their language. Which they should be.

What scharbock is exactly, or rather, what the band is pointing at, I’m not sure about. Wiki lists three options: 1) the alter ego of the early 20^th century poet Werner Riegel, 2) a spring plant, extremely rich of vitamin C or 3) a disease English-speakers call Scurvy. I have a dark brown feeling the band might be referring to the third option.

The band that formed in 2004 recorded its first full-length record in summer of 2010. They titled it Blickwinkel and released it in February of this year. And guess what, it’s the one undergoing our scrutiny this very moment!

The other day TNOTB had a post featuring Kittie’s new video for the song We are the Lamb from their just released album, I’ve Failed You. That song inspired me to listen to the iTunes previews of every song on the album. After two listens to each preview I bought the album. Now, I was a fan of their debut, Spit, when it came out in ’99, though partially ’cause of the novelty of a Metal band of teen girls. I don’t listen to Spit anymore but I do occasionally listen to the follow-up, Oracle. I sampled some tunes from their next three albums but didn’t find anything to convince me that Oracle wasn’t their best, until now.

When you see the release date of this album, August 25^th 2008, you could say ”better late than never”. But, if you’re a bit of a regular reader, you may know that The Baboon wasn’t even a splash of semen yet in 2008 and so we couldn’t have reviewed it in time unless we made use of some fuckin’ time warping equipment or something. So, instead we’d like to say ”it may be slightly senior, it’ll still get it up fast!”

The band responsible for Mirror Faced Mentality is called Scamp and they’re Danish. To be exact, they hail from Århus, which is on the bit of Denmark that’s connected to the erst of Europe as well as the second largest city in Denmark. At current the band is made up of four dudes, called Mikael Rise (vocals and didgeridoo – yes, you read that right, didgeridoo), Morten Christensen (drums), Kristian Bruun (guitars) and Martin Dalmark (bass). At the time Mirror Faced Mentality was recorded the latter wasn’t in yet, but a dude named Mads Christensen (guitars and bass) was.