One of the bands that lie close to my heart are Danmaku, a UK Thrash band that granted me the honour of reviewing their debut, when I was but a freshman. Now, more than half a year later, I still remember Paul Harrington and his “blood-covered tank of death”. Last week I send a quick e-mail over to the home front, to check out how things were going.

In short, Danmaku are a three-piece Death/Thrash outfit, with members from Anaal Nathrakh, The Ocean and Hospital of Death. Their debut Turn Up the Gas, certainly adds some coal to the fire, and contains seven tracks of tearing and intense Thrash Metal with some kick ass Hardcore vocals from Mike Pilat. You can read my full review here.

It’s been a lengthy day, so let me serve you a quicky and then hit the pillow. I came across this band from Western Kentucky some time ago, called Voyage of Slaves. Their Facebook page describes their music as ”Blackened Viking Zombie Thrash / Death Metal”, ”Death / Thrash Metal with a lemony, blackened twist” and “Old-school Death / Thrash Viking Zombie Metal”. I don’t claim to have listened to their full repertoire, but might I add that there’s a hint of Pirate Metal in there somewhere as well?

I’m fuckin’ about of course, but eventually the band does make a point: there are lots of styles and influences on display here. It’s Metal that’s both raw and unpolished, melodic, pounding and epic in the Folky sort of way. But there are also flat-out Black Metal patterns on occasion that scrape the skin of your back. All in all, nothing that the average Metalhead wouldn’t be appreciative off.

I had a hard time making my mind up about this album. This album just pulled me two ways, and I couldn’t choose whether I liked it or didn’t. In the end, I found that this album is just what it says, it’s an album for the heretic.

It’s funny that for days, no weeks I couldn’t make sense of this record at all. Started it more than a few times, but I often just quit half-way through, often out of pure boredom. However, now it has gotten a little more depth for me, I can finally start on pulling this apart properly. When I skim through the song titles, the first thing they make me think of is Warhammer 40,000. The whole god-thing, the power, the Latin phrases etc. really make my mind go towards my two best friends who play this shit, but I don’t because it’s too damn expensive. Anyways, I still don’t know what it is with this album so let’s just dive in.

As I was checking out some of Death’s work, I made a jump to Toxic Holocaust’s latest work. The two minute-long Judgement Awaits You didn’t really attract my attention, but as I clicked through to Revocation’s latest single No Funeral, my day got better. It was fresh, catchy, yet extreme and fast. This was something I needed more of.

Revocation was formed in 2006 and they have released three albums and one EP to date. In order to stay with today, I decided to dive into their latest album Chaos of Forms, released just about 4 months ago. Looking at lyrics, song length or anything, this is nothing special, but boy, this album just gets me banging from the first note.

Among my friends, I’ve always been the one to defend Thrash Metal as one of the better Metal sub genres. It’s been the lame and too soft genre, and on the one hand it’s true that Thrash often balances on the brink between what we call Extreme Metal and Pussy Metal (what falls under the latter is subjective of course). But here comes the point. Where I tend to regularly get into a Thrash-mood, and I do enjoy a hell of a lot of Thrash on those days, I simply can’t grasp the idea of Progressive Thrash.

And that’s exactly what we’re having today with the American Vektor, who hail from Arizona. They present themselves as “a progressive sci-fi thrash metal band”, who see their music as “a journey into controversial places.” and a “questioning of reality, existence, minds, souls, and the fleeting feeling of fullness in them.” A pretty interesting concept.

And while we’re in India, let’s just stay there for another quick one. This one’s called Artillerie and was also delivered to us by Adam. Compared to Exhumation this band carries a little less punch and a tad more melody. Take those quantifiers literally though, this still isn’t suitable for your poor old aunty in geriatric park.

Artillerie formed in 2004 in New Delhi and after an EP and a split, both in 2008, 2010 gave the world their debut, Eradefiled. Chugging is a good descriptor, with a certain Thrashiness to it, combined with an ample supply of groove and thrusting vocal work.

For me, the release of this record has passed by silently, and I only discovered it existed a few days ago. As you probably know, Lulu is a collaboration record between Lou Reed and Metallica. Funnily, when I think of Lou Reed, I think of his song Perfect Day, and when I think of Metallica I think of Fuel. Two songs that are seemingly quite the opposite. This was reflected when I gave their single The View a first spin, since I was repulsed by the combination of Metal and Spoken Word.

However, today I gave it another few spins and I think I’ve seen the light. The lyrics are sure enough quite brilliant, the riffing is pretty good and Kirk Hammett seems to be playing a real metal guitar-solo for the first time in his 30-year career.

Yes! Part 2 of the most important list in the whole wide world of Metal. The list of best albums I have reviewed all year. You can’t possibly get a more complete overview of what happened in the Metallic world, anywhere.

Seriously though, this is just a list. My own little list of fifteen albums that struck a special chord with me this year. But then again, I do hear a fuckload of Metal over the course of a year and the fact that these fifteen stood out as the top albums does make them a little special, don’t you think? Hence they are albums that I highly recommend you to listen to, and buy when you can get your grubby hands on them and have no more fuckin’ debts to pay off.

When November had just turned to December, we wrote a short piece about a Swedish fun-Thrash outfit called Six in Line. The band at the same time plays some old-school sounding Thrash Metal and don’t take themselves too seriously. Music with a dose of humor can never go wrong and it’s why I liked their shit so much.

Well, the guys have recently uploaded two new songs to a secret location on the internets and I was invited to check ‘em out. And so I did. ‘Cause I’m Dutch and free stuff makes my dick hard.

Hey motherfuckers! I’m back from the living dead! Because that’s what I’ve been best described as over the past two weeks. Making fairly long working days of on average 16 hours and with peaks up to 20 hours turns you into a gibbering type of flesh monkey and with 80 meg Excel models crashing your computer all the time, your forehead soon turns into a bloody mess from all the headbutting the wall. I wasn’t looking too fresh.

But thankfully there was plenty of time to soak in fuckloads of Metal – at least when I wasn’t punching my laptop in the face. Just no time to write about all these fuckloads. Next to the deep-toned instrumental by Christian Olde Wolbers, one of the very few things I was able to churn out earlier, one of the most important songs to have pulled me through these weeks is Chimaira’s Year of the Snake. Every time I played the bastard its boundless energy and contained aggression breaking loose brought exactly that up in my inner being and it kept me rolling.

And so I must share!