It has been a while, eight years to be exact. The last time I got myself coiled with the German CRIPPER was back in the 2009 with their sophomore "Devil Reveals", a few years before the band started to rise up, eventually signing with the international label Metal Blade Records, after suffocating the life out of Europe. Several months back I noticed that they are up to release a new album, and I told myself that I would rise up for the challenge again, check out what is happening in the camp. Therefore, I was introduced to the expressive "Follow Me: Kill!". I never expected for a close similarity to their past, yet I also didn't quite expect to what I ended up with.

I never did get the chance to listen to the band's previous "Hyëna" album, and to be honest, I didn't want to start reading about or have a session with it. My mindset was to take "Follow Me: Kill!" head on without looking back. In overall, the beautiful thing about CRIPPER's music is that you can call it whatever you wish but certainly not what they used to represent. I believe that using the term "evolution" would be quite suitable, yet one of the qualities that I admire about this band, and it drastically proven in "Follow Me: Kill!", is that they don't like to stick around for too long in a singular space but rather explore. Although it sounds amusing from a mostly traditional Metal devotee, there is something refreshing about it, and if the performance caliber is ample enough, wouldn't it be logical to just enjoy it?

In their core, whether through their sound or closer to the vast majority of their material, CRIPPER are a modern Thrash Metal band, a fact that is hard to shake. However, their songwriting became uneven, flexible, needless to say that you can't predict almost anything channeled by the generated brainstorming. That is clearly one of "Follow Me: Kill!"'s greatest advantages. That same edge was even able to capitalize the general lack of melodies within the songs, which could have been a major contribution to the effort. "Running High", for instance, which displayed a different kind of intensified sensation, shared a result of provocative songwriting, crossing subgenres in a flash in order to assert additional dimensions to the core music. "Comatose" explored the same fields, producing an Alternative kind of feel, deploying a brittle atmospheric vibe that bordered a sort of bizarreness.

On the other hand, the band's brutal imagery, and main weapon, also came across stretchy visions to come up with the next impact. "Bleeding Red" demonstrated an heavily assorted arrangement, venturing on a brute force journey through the alleys of brutality. The mass hypnosis of "Into The Fire" inflicted pain as a catchy groove machine and craftily written while "Shoot or Get Shot" assimilated the power of the main riff at is will, turning violence into solid gold. There is not a better way to end an album with an explosive meat grinder, "Menetekel" retained some of the Thrash Metal equities of the earlier evolutionary stages of the band, determined and with plenty of conviction, and this is one hell of good track.

"Follow Me: Kill!" is one of those few non melodic, groove based albums that were able to snatch my attention after a few moments of the opener. There is a lot of talent and skill within the ranks of CRIPPER, a process of development that became a fortune.