So I am back with my Thrash Metal reviews, a genre I so adore and never get tired off even when its popularity seems to fade away due to the wide spread opinion of lack of innovation, something which I disagree with. Anyways, so here we got a California based Thrash quartet PSYCHOSOMATIC with their 4^th full length album "Clicking Sound Of A Hammer Pulled Back" which was released on September 18^th.

The album has a typical modern Thrash sound to it, although is much commendable for bringing in some cool sharp riffs and interesting song writing like the album ending acoustic song in "Downcast". It's one of those albums that does struggle initially for its own identity and appeal, but the more you listen to you, the more clearly it gets. With a weird album name, you do expect weird song names, and surely you get them in the form of "Murder Of Crows" and "Hemmorage". The album has brutality written all over it right from the album cover art to the riffs to the lyrics. It's fair to say that the guitar work in this album is the pillar of the album's strength and as the rest of the instruments including vocals pretty much revolve around the song structure driven by the guitars. The songs are full of fast paced riffs, mostly which are sharp and distinctive, a style that I particularly love and appreciate in the Thrash genre. The drums are faster than the usual Thrash album and the vocals of raspy, thick and typical of Thrash vocal style, although doesn't offer anything new, does work just fine with the whole band's music.

 Just when I thought the album was getting a bit monotonous, "Summoning" plummets the ears with some insane sharp riffs and solos. The guitar work here is simply superlative and has been constantly on my playlist leading up to this review. The much publicized and weirdly named "Grand Mal Seizure" is another brutal plummeting Thrash anthem. In fact, I had to lower the volume a bit while listening to this song to not damage my eardrums. It's fucking loud and heavy. The album kicks in brilliance suddenly when you least expect it to, like in the ending riff of "Hemmorage" where the riff is head on for that extra second making it simply super cool. Like mentioned earlier, the 12 song album ends beautifully with an acoustic guitar strumming song in "Downcast", with a pistol loading sound being played occasionally besides the dark chirpy sound creating an eerie atmosphere.

Although the album did grow on me and I have loved the album over the period of time that I have listened to it, the album does fade away due to its unidimensional and monotonous nature. But however I must commend the production here as it brings out the slight atmospheric feature in the band's music. With an apt cover art for an album named ""Clicking Sound Of A Hammer Pulled Back", PSYCHOSOMATIC gets most things right. Although not a very great album by any means, seasoned Thrash fans should enjoy this.<