[avatar =”Mosh” size=”50″ align=”left” /]A swift journey to the home of neutrality, awesome pocket knives and a surprisingly large number of guns per capita… Switzerland. There we find young thrash upstarts Comaniac who released their debut album just under a month ago. An album they emailed me about prior to its release, which I grabbed a preview copy of, and then promptly forgot about amongst a million other things.
Damn, am I regretting that now that I’ve had a chance to listen to it.
OK, so it’s a thrash album. There are a lot of bands re-emerging from the bleak desert as the metal scene has some kind of resurgence, but it’s always good to see a new band ing their ranks and paying tribute to one of metal’s classic genres. No frills, no pretensions; Return to the Wasteland is as pure a thrash album as you’re likely to hear in 2015.
Its creation is fairly typical of most debut albums I’m getting these days. The band formed in 2010, released a demo shortly afterwards, recruited the current line-up as a result, practised and put together the final release over the following year or so. Five years from inception to release seems pretty normal.
Accompanying the release is a video for track two, “Secret Seed”, which you can see below. It’s a strong song from a strong album, and representative of Comaniac as a whole.
As well as the standard fast guitar, tremelo-induced wails and abrasive vocals, Comaniac show off their clean guitar skills with the opening of “Cut Throat”, probably my personal favourite on the album. Ethereal and chilling, getting gradually darker until the true thrash begins, this is as good an intro as I’ve heard on a thrash song in many a year. The rest of the track doesn’t disappoint either.
Vocally, I’d say the band remind me more of Exodus than any other classic band, but musically, I’d probably say nearer early Metallica. Ish. Sean would probably be able to pinpoint a far more accurate likeness.
Honestly, though, if this is the standard of new thrash bands then the genre has nothing to fear – it’s got a long, long life ahead of it.
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