Any album that has a song on named after the world’s greatest band had best be good, right? Right!
If last year’s UK live show’s reminded everyone just what an underrated band Flotsam and Jetsam was, then this, their first record for four years arrives at the perfect time to reinforce that view.
After years of basic slumber, Thrash Metal, you see, is waking up, and bursting in with the very latest pick me up for the formerly creaking old genre is this, right here.
Horns are up early and they never really come down. “Seventh Seal” cheerfully offers heavy metal a scrap and wins hands down, and “Life Is A Mess” takes Anthrax’s “Caught In A Mosh” or Exodus’ “Toxic Waltz” as its starting point and essentially suggests that getting in a circle pit might cheer you up in this difficult world, “Taser” the third song here, will surely get people moving in one of their own.
It is, though, the first single on this album that immediately got attention here at MV. Calling a track “Iron Maiden” kinda does that to a person. Not about Eddie and The Boys so far as we can tell, it is nonetheless a quite brilliant gallop through some twin guitars and provides a real highlight here.
That piece of work is– you imagine deliberately – at odds with most of the rest of the fayre on this particular menu, which mostly takes in a darker taste. “Verge Of Tragedy” summons up a kind of evil brew, “Creeper”, with its primal drumbeats and urgent bass groove, is genuinely unsettling and “L.O.T.D” is perfectly to dust off its studded belt and hi-tops for some good, old fashioned fun.
The rest of it never really strays from the path too far, “Monkey Wrench” gets its fists in the air, “Smoking Gun “ fires at will and hits most of its targets and finishing things with the epic, almost steamroller like “Forbidden Territories” is a fine move, if for no other reason than it is so good a song it destroys everything in its path and leaves nothing whatsoever in its wake.
Perhaps never as overtly thrashy as some of their contemporaries anyway, Flotsam and Jetsam are nevertheless walking the line between heavy and thrash metal as well as anyone there is, and this is worthy of investigation. Album number 12 of their stellar career is a bit of a cracker.
Rating 8/10
