Suicidal Angels – Divide and Conquer

Suicidal Angels
Divide and Conquer
NoiseArt Records
★★★★★

It’s been a while since I could confess to falling in love with a thrash albums. Bands have tried to woo me and have failed because they could not stick to the fundamentals of what makes a great thrash album.

Enter Suicidal Angels. They sound like a grotesque horror death band. The album cover points in that direction. You can thank Ed Repka for that. If the name sounds familiar, check out his work for Megadeth, Death, and Municipal Waste.

Somewhere in the late ‘80s I remember buying The Accused album (one of the Martha Splatterhead releases) solely for the album cover. Then I listened to the release and it’s intense insanity blew me into the next dimension. I would hope kids buy this album for the album cover because it’s quite the spectacle. More importantly, I hope kids buy this album for what’s inside because I would bet it will blow them into the next dimension.

Not really comparable to The Accused beyond being intense, brutal with the guitar chord structures and some power thrash songs.

Suicidal Angels – In The Grave Music Video

The title track is dust-stirring mosh friendly. The guitar solos will make you want to lose your mind. And the songs are long, like epic metal long. “Control The Twisted Mind” is a full-on attack on society in the way you would expect a band like this to take on. Leave it to the Greeks to pull off something so poignant as they have every reason to with an empoverished economy and lackluster political system. Yet society still functions and this band has the hunger to lash out.

“Terror Is My Scream” maybe the shortest song on the album (clocking in at just over three minutes), the power drum beats is enough to give you whiplash from the head banging. But then it all gets sucked up into a thrash chaos. All of this leads into “Pit Of Snakes,” which is “Caught in a Mosh” -like quality.

The album is so good, it’s maddening. You get that the first pass, but you want to listen to this album over and over again to really get to know what is going on with these songs. Follow the path of each musician and you get a new perspective into an otherwise solid group of songs I cannot find fault with anywhere.

Say hello to my new favorite band!