Let's be honest here: there's no one on the planet who likes teenage boys.  They're stupid, they think they know everything, they move with all the grace of a new-born calf, and the noises that come out of their mouth-holes are generally unintelligible and offensive.  In other words, they're the perfect humans for making old school, in-your-face, ugly blackened thrash.  Sweden's ATONEMENT launched out of the gate post-Covid like three sixteen-year old boys stepping out of a time machine from 1982. Their demo "Merciless Blasphemy' from 2021 put them on the shit-splattered map, and now Dying Victims Productions has released their official debut "Sadistic Invaders."  This is about as stripped-down and fundamental as extreme metal gets, 35 minutes of buzz-saw guitars, gnarled vocals and trash can percussion.  You know, music made by teenagers!

"Hellish Delight" starts the onslaught off, a punishing slab of old school blackened thrash, the dirty stepchildren of HELLRIPPER.  Like most of the songs on this album, it's a no-nonsense, stripped down version of early '80s thrash, albeit darker and nastier. Ludvig Rosth's vocals consist of a series of strangulated grunts and screeches, and his guitar parts are relatively simple power chord progressions.  Niklas Saari and Mille Lundstrom instill a youthful, but brutal, energy to the songs, with Saari's bass mixed low and heavy. "Await the Command" has a militant, fists-in-the-air feel before blasting into straight up thrash underneath one of Rosth's ugly, frantic solos.  "Fatal Militia" starts where "Await the Command" left off: the metal steam train is headed down the mountain, brake levers severed from their chains, and anything in its path will be crushed underneath 220 tons of metal. And from here, the three 19-year olds from Sweden continue honoring the gods of metal past, that steam train running full speed out of control.

In some ways, it's easy to understand why ATONEMENT is getting the buzz. They can't be the only group of teenagers out there trying to play fast, evil, nasty metal, but they're the ones getting signed to a label.  In the grand scheme of things, though, the album becomes monotonous after the first few songs and it's hard to differentiate one from the next.  At an ambient level this works- there are times when the songs are so fast and noisy that they create a buzz-saw tone that kind of undercuts the melodies in an interesting, albeit, disturbing way.  The album is definitely one that points to great things to come.  These teenagers are an evil force, waiting to be reckoned with, come their next few releases.  In the meantime, they should just keep manning that train: once they learn how to control it, there's no telling what kind of deliberate damage they can cause.