This trend of bands trying to sound as in the 80s is really annoying sometimes. It's not a matter of you play what you want (that's a right that every musician has), but the need to be different, because if you have nothing to offer musically, you are nothing. Only idiots buy something because it sounds as in the 80s, because the bands that created the past already exist or existed, and the their albums are testimonies that doesn't deserve to be desecrated by a bunch of kids who has the need to live a time that they didn't know (and they weren't even born on those days, a fact that makes their dreams a fallacy). But some of these guys should hear the gospel of FRONT BEAST, a German veteran and savage band from those days. Just take a listen to "Third Scourge of Mankind", and you'll understand.

Avenger is the only founding member of the band (and the only one who recorded everything on the album), and guides the band in a wise way since 1989. It's truly old school, but the band is from those days, so it justifies my words. Here pulses identity, with nasty sounds that remember the early days from SWOBM, a kind of sound that will make you thing about DARKTHRONE on its golden times, but with a more worked and with good melodies. Of course you can feel the influences from early Thrash/Death Metal bands as KREATOR, DESTRUCTION and SODOM in the band's DNA, but it's truly good. The sound quality is truly raw and nasty, like those records from the 80s, but not as noisy as those recordings from the earlier Norwegian Black Metal sound (when bands were searching for a new sound formula to the genre), and the mastering done by Joel Grind (from TOXIC HOLOCAUST) make the sound flows in a good form, with no greater problems. The 80s essence is on the instrumental tunes, because the sound quality is good. Not excellent, but good, and fits in what the band's musical work.

Very good musical arrangements and nasty elements, the songs of FRONT BEAST are really good. But their best shots can be heard on "Journey to Golgotha" (with a long intro, but so you have an energetic song, with very good guitars), the very good tempo changes of "Swallowed by Night" (in some arrangements, we can feel the influence of MERCYFUL FATE on their sound, especially in some riffs), the good melodic lines and thrashing fury shown on "Flaming Tombs of Heresy" (a very good work on vocals and on the rhythmic session), the good slow tempos of "Imperial Fire", and the Punk/Hardcore scent shown on the harmonies of "Purity in Ashes". Maybe a copy of "Third Scourge from Darkness" can teach a lesson to those 80's Metal wannabes once and for all.