Monday, February 1, 2010

HAVOK – Burn CD review


HAVOK – Burn CD
Candlelight Records

Colorado’s HAVOK are the embodiment of all the cool things about Thrash. This, their debut, is proof that there’s plenty of life left in a genre that creates music this fun as well as aggressive. These riffs were made for headbanging and slam pit action. They even find some room to throw in melodies and technical leads to charm connoisseurs, snobs and wannabe know it alls. It’s kinda funny that just a month ago I was telling a friend that this Thrash Revival, which I’ve always supported, was on its last legs as far as bands putting out quality releases. Thankfully I was wrong and in this band’s case being wrong ain’t a bad thing. Even though this is the band’s debut full length HAVOK have been around for five years and have a demo plus a few EP releases under their bullet belts. From what I can see the band has been playing these cuts on Burn for a while now. It’s a shame that this has just come out recently because after one listen you’ll place HAVOK on the same pedestal with other Thrash Revival acts like MUNICIPAL WASTE, TOXIC HOLOCAUST and WARBRINGER. Also like those mentioned bands, HAVOK doesn’t bring much to the genre that one would consider fresh but then who the fuck cares, right? It’s Thrash dammit! It’s supposed to get your blood flowing, throw your mind into berserker mode and express jerky motions in public. If I wanted forward thinking music I’d play some Post Rock boredom and then slit my fuckin wrists. So to all the snobs out there who will listen to this and then scream “I hear TESTAMENT or I hear METALLICA”, I got a big Fuck You to your faces. Both of those bands today only wish they could come up with songs like “Ivory Tower”, “The Root of Evil” or the closing monster of a cut “Afterburner”. Sure they had their salad days and no one disputes that fact. TESTAMENT is still putting out decent stuff. I don’t wanna even talk about those other guys. But the fact is that bands like HAVOK bring back that glory of old without being an all out cover sounding band like TRIVIUM or some post Thrash era wank like MACHINE HEAD. This is a worthy addition to your Thrash Revival CD collection which could sit proudly next to the past greats.

www.candlelightrecords.com

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