Label: Independent
Date: September 30th, 2022
Once I heard, and this is still true in some way, the scene of Latin America is the hermetic one. Reason is that almost the whole South and Central America speaks the same language, so even in today’s times it can be difficult to communicate with a lot of bands and labels if you can’t speak Spanish. Anyways, I somehow feel that the scene from Asia is even more hermetic and isolated in some way. And there;s tons of great ensembles of all possible sub-genres of our beloved music! A little better situation is with Japanese hordes (even if it’s only about maniax who are really deep into this music and the number of bands is very few). But other countries like Indonesia, Thailand or India are practically terra incognita for the very most of us. That’s why I decided to review some bands out there.
In the first place it’ll be a quite young band called Amorphia. Well, they exist already ten years, but since their first release is from 2018, then this isn’t any heresy to say like that, in my opinion. “Lethal Dose” is their third full-length and, as I know, the second one released independently by the band – the same was with a debut, but there’s some difference between “Arms to Death” and “Lethal…”. I even don’t mean music as itself, but the form of releasing it. And what is the difference? Well, read the review to the last line and so you’ll get to know! By the way, the third album of our friends from not too huge (well, as on Indian standards this is quite little) town called Cherthala contains nine tracks of thrash metal. And this is an old school one in the vein I probably like the most, even if the American way of playing such music also is what makes my heart beat faster. Well, then you know what bands influence Amorphia. Actually I should say: “bands coming from what country” in the previous sentence. By the way, contrary to the most of people who I know I somehow connect what I hear on “Lethal Dose” even more with the band created 1983 (under the name Satanica which was changed to present one in 1985) in Düsseldorf then these ones from Essen or Gelsenkirchen, who are pure living legends and whose albums (especially earlier ones) know everyone. Well, maybe this is a reason why they don’t even mention authors of “The Upcoming Terror”, “Interstellar Experience”, “Breaking the Silence” or “Combat Cathedral” – I afraid not too many people, even in my age, know them.
Anyways, those nine songs I mentioned before take a little more than thirty five minutes. You find everything what you expect from old school Thrash Metal “made in Germany” – sharp riffs, exuberant aggression, blasting drumming. At the same time this is very technical music with changes of tempo and several guitar tricks here and there. Well, for example in “Death Machines” they take place quite often (I mean guitar tricks), which absolutely doesn’t mean there’s less aggression or something! To be honest, the whole album is one huge eruption of aggression, also these slower parts participate in that as well! You know, with aggression in music is the same as with brutality, if you know what I mean. And I hope and am sure you do it, at least most of you.
This is one of the best thrash metal records of so called small bands I have heard in a long time. And the fact this is released by a band in not too old school format, and even contrary, confuses me a little. I mean, this is so great music labels should fight with each other to be able to release this on CD, tape, vinyl or all of them! And here the time to explain the difference between their debut full-length and “Lethal…” has come. Of course a lot of you already know what this difference is about. But I promised at the beginning of the review I’ll tell this, so… “Arms to Death” was also released independently by Amorphia, but it was a very limited number of CDs in this case – only 100 copies. So it seemed like a little miracle their second album was released by Awakening Records, I guess. By the way (and it’s surely the last sentence of my scribble) “Lethal…” is a fresh album released even less then a month ago!
