I recently had the pleasure of listening to what could possibly be one of the fastest, heaviest and brutal Thrash Metal albums to be released in 2014. ALKIRA, hailing from Adelaide, Australia, over the last 4 years have released 2 EP's, shared the stage with names such as WARBRINGER and MUNICIPAL WASTE, toured Southeast Asia with HAVOK, and have now released their debut full length album entitled "Juggernaut".

At first listen of this release, I was enticed by the way these young musicians can portray such a classic brutal thrash metal sound! The grooves, riffs, speed and even the vocals at times, remind me of the early era SEPULTURA that us old school thrashers adore so much, along with melody's in the lead lines and solos that those of us with a sweet tooth for some straight up ballsy NMOBHM can enjoy too. This album seems to hold a lot of inspiration from different eras and style of metal all blended together to make some great works of art. That being said though, ALKIRA seem to have found a style of their own very easily that works very well in their favour.

This album has a lot of great moments on it, every song is great and it is easy to differentiate between each song. I find that if songs sound too much like one another on the same album, I lose interest and focus, but there's nothing of that Ilk present in this album to me. I won't dig in to too much detail about each song on this album though because I want listeners to do that for themselves when hearing it, but what I can say is that I guarantee that 90% of Metalheads will love this release! I always find myself making quick opinions on an album by the opening tracks, if the first track gets me, then it assures me that I should like everything else on the album too, which I'm sure is the same for most people. And for this record, "Chains", is a great short opening track that really pulls you in from the first few bars; it's an atmospheric and melodic piece that is sure to make you continue listening. It is also sweetly deceiving at the same time as its almost nothing like every other track in the sense that here, we have a display of musical beauty that I'd expect for an opener for an epic power metal album... and then the disc flips the mood, and explodes straight into "Submission Therapy", breaking every headbangers neck within an earshot! Other stand out tracks for me would be songs like, "The Fleet", "Spiritual Abuse (Parallel Prisons)", the title track "Juggernaut", and the 8 minute epic of a closer "Shattered End". But as I said before, every song on this release is a winner and a strongly recommend you pick it up for your collection!