Kill All Kings
Channel Zero
•
June 23, 2014
Belgian thrash legends Channel Zero, are releasing a new album after 18 years! Full of attitude and riffs, this is an album long awaited and needed in the thrash metal scene.
Dark Passenger blazes the initial trail with screaming guitars fading in to what sounds a little like an alarm, before smashing into a chugging barrage of riffs, and some cool guitar harmonies too. The vocal is a very old school thrash vocal, very well performed and nice and aggressive; the chorus is really well performed here, with some nice high notes and a good sense of melody too. There's plenty going on in this song to get you into the sound of the album straight away.
This is another Thrash album in recent times with lots of different stuff going on, rather than just sticking to high speed chugathons. Being an older band, they delve into the more mid-tempo yet equally heavy style that made thrash worth listening to. The song Electric Cocaine with powerful guitars meeting with a mighty rhythm section to make a really heavy almost groove metal style track. The faster stuff isn't ignored of course, with songs like Mind Over Mechanics, with its twisting and turning riffs and really full frontal aggressive attack making it one of the heaviest on the record, with heavy guitars really battering the ears here. Duisternis follows this one up with even more of the same heaviness by the way, with meaty riffs and a really cool dynamic song style with plenty of different moments going on throughout, including a cool verse and chorus with some real anger in the vocals it feels, almost sounding like Sepultura in places.
One of my favourites from the album is Ego. From the opening clean guitars building a really cool tense atmosphere, to the heavy as hell guitar riffage that slams in later, this is a really well written song, with some really well performed vocals showing the versatility of the singer here, with clean vocals seamlessly blending with the bits on the harsher side. This one was followed up by Crimson Collider which is another top track, with some nice melodic guitar moments and some more cool vocals.
The album closes on Heart Stop, which a nice heavy song backed up by some really solid bass playing. The vocals again shine really well here, and the song is quite sad sounding overall. It closes the album with some emotion and works really well to finish the album
The production is spot on for this album, and everything is nice and audible as it needs to be. The drums sound nice and aggressive, backed by a really tough sounding bass, chunky guitars and some well recorded vocals too!
This is a really strong album from Channel Zero, after the tragedy of losing their drummer Phil Baheaux, the band has pulled through to perform on with vigour on this album, with some great examples of proper thrash songwriting mixed with modern metal production and nice musicianship too.
9 / 10
Almost Perfect
"Kill All Kings" Track-listing:
1. Dark Passenger
2. Electronic Cocaine
3. Burn The Nation
4. Ego
5. Crimson Collider
6. Kill All Kings
7. Brother's Keeper
8. Army Of Bugs
9. Mind Over Mechanics
10. Duisternis
11. Heart Stop
Channel Zero Lineup:
Franky DSVD - Vocals
Phil B / Roy Mayorga - Drums
Tino De Martino -Bass
Mikey Doling - Guitar
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