Various Artists — Thrashing Like A Maniac

This an enjoyable and fairly consistent compilation of the new wave of thrash music that’s reared its ugly headbang head over the last few years from the earache label, that features not just earache bands but a whole slue of other labels work too.

Much of this unsurprisingly sounds very close to Thrash legends of the past you can hear traces of Metallica, Anthrax, Megadeath and the most favourite influence here seems to be early Slayer with the often Tom Araya like screams, Kerry King type soloing and Slayer grim/ fast riff craft. But each track having at least something worthwhile about it, and there kept short and sweet for the most part too, so you’re always only few minutes from you next shot of trash mayhem

There are a few tracks and bands  here that stand out from the rotting crowd & go beyond retro fun and manager to cerement there own identity- A few of the stand out moments come in the form of:  The hectic breakneck trash meets hardcore bounding of Warbringer’s Total war with the leading singing doing a great Araya on speed rant, some insane Kirk Hammet over drive soloing and a great chant and air punch chorus. Gamma Bomb  comic and Memorable trash-atron  that is  Zombi Brew with some nice high pitched vocal over the topness here and there. Mutant’s Psycho Therapy prime evil chugging riff fest with some nice going towards death metal like grunts littered here and there, and a great yell along chorus of  "psycho surgery, lack of human empathy, insane is all I’ve ever be".

A compilation which brought back that teenage feeling once more and even tempted me in places to start head banging. I was a little cynical of the whole new wave of trash music thing- but I’ll have to say this really changed my mind.