Australia’s thrash kings in waiting return with another stellar effort
Although it might not seem obvious, Melbourne’s Harlott are trailblazers.
Yes, they sound like the greats of thrash, but that’s the point. Their major label debut, 2015’s “Proliferation” was one of the first moments where you got a sense that thrash was back. No bullshit. No post this, no core that, instead, Andrew Hudson and his not so merry men, announced themselves with an album that was vicious, nasty, fast and downright brutal.
18 months later and they are back. Still pissed off (let’s be honest, a lot has happened since to make even a Buddhist rage…) but crucially, still only interested in thrashing. Fast and hard.
That’s not to say it is some warmed-over bunch of Exodus covers because it isn’t. This is fresh and vital, and that’s not to say that “Extinction” sounds the same as “Proliferation” because it doesn’t, but it is fair to say that it is 12 tracks of rare violence.
Kicking off by kicking your head in with the title track – in fairness there is precisely 48 seconds of eerie stuff before it gets down to the business of taking a broken bottle to your face – is a window into their world. Designed solely for the most brutal of moshpits, but complete with a brilliant fists in the air chorus, it is a perfect modern thrash affair.
The first single from the record, “First World Solutions” follows, and repeats the dose, and the sense of Slayer-like foreboding that “Penitent” delivers is no doubt intentional.
If the whiff of violence is never far away, then it is never closer than on the whirlwind that is “Whore”, while the quality and tightness of the riffs and the razor-sharp solos is stamped all over “No Past.”
“Conflict Revelation” begins with a mighty bass groove, but it passes by at a breakneck speed and if all of this might sound like a case of so far, so thrash, then that’s perhaps fair, but Harlott do it so well that no one minds. “Better Off Dead” is a case in point.
And actually, those looking for progression can find it. “Violent Conspirator” is 100 seconds of pure hate, but this is balanced out superbly by the multi-layered epic of “And Darkness Brings The Light.” Close on eight minutes, it hints at some untapped groove side that Harlott will perhaps explore more thoroughly in the future.
Mostly, though, this is all about speed. “Final Weapon” is a blitzkrieg raid, “Parasite” sets its sights on its target and doesn’t miss, while “Epitaph” rounds out a collection that knows its way around the greats but is in the debt of no one.
On “Extinction” Harlott have shown themselves to be what we thought they were last time. They are both one of the best of the new breed and also one of thrash’s most enthusiastic modern advocates.
Rating 8/10
