Saturday, February 6, 2016

Black Heaven-Blast The Mankind (2014)

Black Heaven is a modern day thrash metal band from Peru. They are mixing their classic thrash with an early-sounding style of black metal similar to what Bathory was doing on the pre-"Hammerheart" albums. By mixing these two styles and injecting some speed metal in the vein of Venom, we get Black heaven's debut full-length album "Blast The Mankind".  This album really is extremely fast, and certainly a blast from the past. The album begins with the title track which serves as killer introduction. It really reminds me quite a bit of early Destruction as well in terms of sound and purpose, and right away, the guitar riffs sound like something straight from the early Bathory or Sodom catalogue too. For the most part, the pace is fairly fast. This is definitely an album meant to melt your face off with the power of thrash. The songs are fast and these solos are fairly simple yet effective. This may seem atypical for thrash metal, and it did feel a little strange to me at first. This makes the album seem bland at times and generic. This is still a solid album that contains some badass guitar riffs, but it certainly would have benefitted from more solos and variation. In terms of drumming, the album is fairly one-sided, we mostly get d-beat punk drumming and ferocious thrash beats. This really amps up the energy and no doubt will satisfy a majority of thrash fans. The early Destruction-Venom-Bathory and Sodom influence no doubt affects the drum performance on this disc, but also especially is influential with the vocal delivery. Luis vocals are absolutely wretched on this album. Sure they do the deed and it's a fun piece of evil blackened thrash metal. Those people who love the old-school stuff should dig this. If you love thrash metal you should own this album!
www.facebook.com/blackheaventhrash
Review by Paul Caravasi

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