“My seven-year itch has come,” seethes Kyle Thomas, “for the middle-class father to son”. If I was them, I’d be scared.
Because this isn’t a seven-year itch at all, this is 27-year rage. And what it means, basically, is Exhorder are back – and let’s get this is out of the way, shall we – this is the best thing they’ve ever done.
Let’s backtrack a little.
Everyone who loves music will have a band that they adore, and which they could never understand why they weren’t massive when some inferior one was. Like, I’ll never get why I was the only one to love Irish Punks, Joyrider, or why not everyone saw Silvertide as the saviours of arena rock. The answer, of course, is that it happens.
So when I started getting into groove metal in the wake of a serious Machine Head obsession when “Burn My Eyes” came out, I kept seeing the name Exhorder. Their debut album “Slaughter The Vatican” was – and still is – a lost classic.
That all being said, it was still a surprise 27 years after record number two, that a pair of them – Thomas and guitarist Vinny LaBella – were dusting off the riffs and coming out of retirement.
The question as to what drives them to do such a thing is answered in track one. Side One. The brilliant “My Time” not only works on the principle that if you’re going to make a comeback then you might as well do it by making an explosion.
But then you look closer at the lyrics here. “I am dealing with assholes and snakes” it spits – and where might this be? Well, the day job. That’s where. The pay off line. “This time, my time is mine, I don’t give a fuck, you’re out of luck, so don’t fucking whine. Right there. That’s it.
That’s why they came back.
The boys in Exhorder, though, don’t strike me as the sort who do things in half measures, so they weren’t going to reappear if there wasn’t anything to say. “Asunder” crushes. It doesn’t particularly care what, either. Just knows that it wants to.
Billed as thrash, and it sort of is – at least it is when it wants to be – but on something like “Hallowed Ground” it is as testosterone fuelled as Symphony X, while the faster “Beware The Wolf” has echoes of Testament.
But Exhorder are from New Orleans. And bands from down there do things their own way, don’t they? So the seven minute epic “Yesterday’s Bones” (which would on any other album be the best thing here) is full of Southern spice, is muggy, hot, sweaty and stormy and although it has a touch of Corrosion Of Conformity about it, it only belongs in the swamplands.
New drummer Sasha Horn, of Forbidden, is in stunning form throughout, but nowhere better than on the pummelling “All She Wrote”, while the slow building “Rumination” is mixed with some genuine trepidation and some musing on a “worthless son of a bitch.” May God have mercy on his soul…..
What “….Skies” has done, actually is mix the classic Exhorder brew, if you like, with some nods to the 21st century. Best shown, perhaps on “Arms Of Man”, and balanced with “Ripping Flesh”, three minutes of moshpit inducing fun, that is the sonic equivalent of a maelstrom. And proud of it.
I do wonder though, if the one the band are most proud of is the title track. The last thing here and almost 10 minutes long. It is grandiose metal of the grandest kind. It is a fitting end to something unexpected on just about every level.
It is also a ten minutes that shows in microcosm why Exhorder, for all the lazy comparisons they balked at back in the day, were worth so much more. Let the others debate what box to put it in and just glory in what is very possibly the comeback of the year.
Rating 9.5/10
