Your new favourite thrash band is right here
Dear me, thrash metal. You had us scared for a while. We thought you’d left us. We were looking for signs of life and everything but you were flatlining. Even the big four were looking shaky.
But now, you’re looking more sprightly than for years. And why? Well, essentially, because you went back to basics and stopped pretending you were some stupid genre with “core” tagged onto the end for no reason.
And the reason for that was quite simple. Kids started making great proper thrash metal records again. Take Finland’s Lost Society, they don’t look old enough to be releasing their third record, but yet here it is – and “Braindead” is very clever indeed.
Recently thrash remembered something. It remembered it needs to channel anger and an undercurrent of barely disguised violence, and if, as Billy Corgan said on The Simpson’s all those years ago (so long ago that the programme was actually good) making kids depressed was as easy as shooting fish in a barrel then making them want to break stuff is even easier.
This, right here, is the soundtrack to either your next temper tantrum and/or blind rage.
Brilliantly Lost Society don’t so much write lyrics as scream slogans, and when they get it right they are basically unstoppable. “Riot” – the best example of what they do – with its sample line “it could be me, but I’m sure it’s you…..” is nothing more and nothing less than a manifesto, and just in case that was all too subtle for you, then “Rage Me Up” is even more pissed off – and doesn’t half sound like Exodus. It’s far from the only great song here, “Mad Torture” with its eerie opening (you assume it’s somebody being mutilated with a chainsaw) is six minutes of crunch, melody and headbanging brilliance and “Hangover Activator” is destined to prove aptly named.
Too many thrash bands think that just because solos and choruses pass by in a blur, then the tracks must do likewise. Not here, Lost Society have neatly worked out that the longer your songs are the more you can pack into them, so main man Samy Elbanna shrieks and tosses out his riffs, with fellow guitarist Arttu Lesonen (ably backed up it must be said by Mirko Lehtinen on Bass and Ossi Paananen on Drums) but things take however long they take. One of them “Only (My) Death Is Certain”, with its grandiose opening and massive thick groove is eight minutes long – that it holds the attention for as well as it does is testament to Elbanna’s skill as a songwriter.
There’s even time for one song to live up to the name of the album. “PST 88” is youthful, snotty potty mouthed exuberance that sounds a little like early Motley Crue attempting to go heavy.
Elsewhere on “Braindead” there’s more than enough to suggest that the intelligent money would bet on Lost Society not only having a longevity, but in the more immediate term, making a significant breakthrough with album number three. This is surely destined to be coming to a vicious moshpit near you soon.
Rating 8.5/10
