Band: Death Angel
Album: Humanicide
Genre: Thrash Metal
Country: USA
Release date: 31st of May
Released via Nuclear Blast
Cover artwork © Nuclear Blast 2019
Humanicide is the 9th album by Death Angel since the year of their founding in 1982. The band started as Dark Theory in ’82, but changed their name soon. Their first full-length album release was in 1987, The Ultra-Violence. In 1991 singer Marc Osegueda left the band and the other members released two albums as The Organization in 1993 and 1995 on which guitarist Rob Cavestany did the vocals. Then there was a break until 2001, Marc Osegueda was back on board, and in 2004 there was the first new Death Angel album since 1990’s famous Act III named The Art of Dying. The last release was The Evil Divide in 2016.
Humanicide consists of 11 tracks and a playtime of 48 minutes. The shortest track “I Came For Blood” with 3:11 minutes playtime, including nearly 30 seconds of guitar solo, is directly followed by the longest track “Immortal Behated” with 6:08 minutes playtime with its clean guitar intro and a one and a half minute long piano outro.
To be honest – I have a problem with the modern, clean sound of the album and the old-school style of songwriting. In my opinion, this is a bad match. I like the guitar solos, even the vocals and the gangshouts, but it doesn’t fit the songs of the album with their slight Punk attitude in the music as I can hear on some Anthrax songs as well for example.
If I imagine another sound while listening to the album, yeah, that’s fine, my feet and my head start moving along with the galloping part in the title track. “Agressor” starts with a clean guitar, sounding like Annihilator’s “Crystal Ann” (I love this track, one of the best intros of a record ever, I think). “Alive and Screaming” makes it very hard to ignore the sound, the moment the drums start, they destroy the scenery of the guitar build-up. They are too loud, and the sound differs a lot from the guitars, but topped by real badly-mixed gang-shouts in “The Pack” – they sound absolutely wrong.
Okay, that’s it then, I’m done.
★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆
5 / 10
(If you’re really need your dose of thrash. But I think you won’t like the album’s sound, as a Thrash guy)
As usual, we added two recommendations to our Transcended Review Playlist.
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