Swiss thrash metal and this is their second release after their debut album "Polymorph".
After the first spin there is one band that entered my mind a lot of times and
that is Slayer. Besides that there are some Bay Area influences from bands like
Testament, Exodus and Forbidden. Another band I want to mention as an influence
is Sepultura. Nevertheless, their biggest influence is still Slayer. The style
of songwriting and the structure of the songs is about the same. Also in the
song "Necessary Evil" vocalist Edy uses a similar singing style Slayer used on
their 'South of Heaven', 'Season in the Abyss' time. The more aggressive singing
style of Edy is a kind of mix between M.O.D.'s Milano, Mike Muir and Araya.
Only on the balladesk track "My Shelf" he really tries to sing, but in my
opinion without success. It is also the weakest track on the album, the vocals
sound a bit nagging. If I have to compare this band with the other new thrash
bands, I would place them somewhat in the middle.
After a while the vocals get a bit boring in the faster tracks because they
don't vary
enough. The constant spitfire of words starts to get a bit boring because of the
lack of variation. On the other hand there are some fine soli, sometimes
reminding a bit of Testament, but also reminding of Slayer like in the track "Profound
Guilt". Tony Sharp's drumming is fast and tight and is in typical Slayer style
and patterns for the bigger part. Listen for example to the opening drumming of
"Feed Me More", and if you don't have to think about the 'Hell Awaits' album you
better go see the hearing docter. The next song "Egosystem" has again an
opening guitar riff that could have been on a Slayer album and the bit slower
drumming pattern and singing style just underlines that, the "South of Heaven"
style isn't far away.
Algebra has made an album that will please many thrash fanatics (read Slayer fans),
but in my opinion they sound too much like their heroes. I know it isn't easy to
sound original, but at least you can try a little more. This is definitely an
album I will listen to more often, but that is just because it all sounds so old
school and reminds me of my youth, but if the band really wants to take steps up
they should write tracks that sound a bit more original. That they know how it
is done can be heard halfway "The Fort Broke".
If you don't care about any originality this can be your thrash metal album of the
month, but only then.
