Artist: Destruction
Venue: Highline Ballroom (New York, NY)
Opener: Heathen, Warbeast
Date: 5/11/2011
Label: Nuclear Blast Records
New York City are you prepared for the “North American Reckoning” Tour that will once again bring a headlining Destruction to our shores and find them doing this with Heathen and Warbeast as support? If not, then you are surely welcome to stay home with regrets but the rest of us will be thrashing like never before with indulgence. The show was originally scheduled to take place at B.B. King Blues Club up in Times Square but it was moved down to the Highline Ballroom a few months ago. In a sense this was a little better because the open floor area is a little more conducive to “crowd interaction” than we find being the case as their sister venue. Anyway, this tour featured two other monster bands of Thrash and I wanted to see what they were all about as well so I managed to arrive just as Warbeast was hitting the stage. The early start hinted that tonight might be an early night for me but I was totally wrong about that.
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Artist: Kreator
Title: “Enemy Of God”
Label: SPV Records
Release Date: 1/11/2005
Genre: Thrash Metal
Rating: 4/5
Like a blast from a volcano Kreator has returned to us with a potent dose of pure and intense Thrash Metal and it proves to any unbeliever that this genre can most assuredly improve over the course of time. “Enemy Of God” is a blistering release that packs a leather clad fist punch to the face of “Nu-Metal”, and it demonstrates very clear to their ilk on how it was gone in the old days. However, despite its powerful opener of “Enemy Of God”, the album also takes time to showcase the influences of some of the music we see happening in today’s extreme scene. Kreator blends elements of Melodic Death to their song structures and as result we find songs like “When Death Takes It’s Dominion” on the release. Mille Petrozza has not lost any of his commanding delivery and seems to be a more evolved Metal presence today in the face of far too much of the same kind of music. The release has moments where it can be able to be viewed as a Metal history lesson based on the Thrash genre and where it comes from originally. Mille as a singer also offers levels of musical growth which adds to the appeal of the release and the band once again. It’s not all a shred fest or pummeling for there are some experimentations into slower more ballad type forays which might surprise you. Such a track is “The Ancient Plague” and while not a ballad like “Home Sweet Home” (Motley Crue), it does make use of more melodic guitar harmony and softer vocals than you often hear this particular band delivering. Of course most of the album is an assault on the senses and you will find this most prominently displayed on “Impossible Brutality”, and “World Anarchy”.
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Where Heavy Music & Pop Culture Collide
