Killaman

Sharing a label with cult metal favourites such as Borknager and Circle of Dead Children certainly doesn’t hurt the credibility of this barely one-year-old European trio. They’re literally a Swedish shit storm. Opening with an updated version of Metallica thrash highlighted by barking low vocals, it descends into a crazy classic rock-bending frenzy. This occurs often throughout the album and brings the edgy guitars to the front of the steady double kicks, introducing an ingenuity that most bands aren’t able to muster. They sequence rows of thrashing riffs, which more often than not end up in a swift but satisfying solo. Predictably, it determinedly reverts into a speeding folly. Their use of breakdowns as structural adhesive is interesting and intonated with dive bombs and suicide squeals. As with many bands that insist on warp speed it gets slightly tiresome and dissipates into the head crunching record that every extreme metal band has dabbled in for the last ten years. While it won’t be defining the future, it righteously entertains the notion that there are possibilities for something novel even if you’re regurgitating metal anthems.