There are occasions when I am lost for words, periods of time when it is hard for me to express my appreciation, or lack of appreciation in several cases, towards an artist's work. After listening to the new album of the German Thrash / Death Metal band, DEATHTALE, named "Apocalyptic Deadline", I had a pretty good idea of how I felt about it yet I couldn't blabber about it that much as I would have wanted. Nonetheless, I am no quitter. All and above, I came across an old school influenced release maintained with modern layers. Frankly I had no expectations to begin with so I took this one with a clear mind. Unfortunately it was just one of those releases that didn't make a breakthrough.

DEATHTALE, born, bread and raised from the ashes of DEMOLITION (I think that I heard of them but not actually listening to any material), has been playing hard in the vein of DEMOLITION HAMMER, early VADER, early SODOM and early SEPULTURA (Right before the SLAYERish manifestation). It is tough and a little raw kind of Thrash with a frontman barking growls of various mixtures. The rhythms were pretty steady and quite common for the genre, mixing the US and EU approaches while taking more points of the EU markers. Nonetheless, the riffing began to sour a bit on the last four tracks, not that on a few of the prior ones those were solid gold, due to utter repetitiveness which caused me to drop and nap from time to time. Even with some of the lead guitar works, which a number of them were fairly nice, there was what seemed to me like lack of enthusiasm. Sure that the band hit with "Deathtale" and "Imagine The Pain", delivering great vocalic work, ample riffing and chopping rhythms, but those two were the only strong points while other only shared a mutual potential of could have beens. "Blood Trail" is maybe one of those that are a little beyond the average thanks to a fine diversity on the bridges, but it is clearly not enough for a superb release.

"Apocalyptic Deadline" is an all out anger with no remorse. It was created to attack and its well delivered sound is just another proof of that. Devoted Thrashers would probably like to have a taste and I recommend that, but if you are looking for more spice, it might not serve you well. So it seemed that I actually had something to say after all, regretfully it was towards the negative side of things, yet it doesn't end here with DEATHTALE right?