Corrosive Elements – Cut The Serpent’s Head

Founded nearly two decades ago, Corrosive Elements is a French Death/Thrash Metal quintet inspired by the greatest of the great of both of these genres – The band themselves freely admit to taking inspiration from such legends as Slayer, early Sepultura, Exodus, Obituary, Bolt Thrower and Napalm Death (the latter of which I am likewise suspecting for having been the motivation behind both the bands name and their heavily political lyrics). 

On paper, Corrosive Elements’ intentions are, it not noble, then at least very humble. They are effectively a love letter to every single band mentioned above, taking in everything that they loved about them individually and merged it all together into a hodge-podge of blazing flurry, most notable on tracks such as the below-linked “Ignorance Is No Longer Bliss”. Less charitably I suppose an argument could be made that they have taken the proverbially everything and thrown it at the wall to see what sticks – But that would only account for the relatively wide span of different bands from which they draw their inspiration. The underlying themes as well as message of the band is as clear as the corrupt politicians all over the world that the band is, among other things, raging against. 

Labelling Corrosive Elements as anything other than a highly political act would be to do them a massive injustice – They clearly have a strong agenda they wish to push, and lyrically they are going about it in a manner clearly molded around what Napalm Death have likewise been doing for decades. Nothing wrong with that, if you are going to be inspired, might as well be from the best around. 

Musically, I am surprised to find myself liking Cut The Serpent’s Head far more than I thought I would. I have never been good at cross-genre mixes, with Death/Thrash Metal being my probably least favourite variant in this regard. Nevertheless, they managed to pull it through, mostly due to the fact that they seem to have been building from a very Punk core, then adding to it with varying aspects that they enjoy from both genres – Such as the slow, simply devastating riffs of Death Metal and the sheer brutality of Thrash Metal (who, if we are being honest, is by its core the Punk aesthetic ramped up to eleven). So all in all, the forty-one minute long second Full-Length record from French aggressors Corrosive Elements gets my seal of approval, for whatever little that is worth. 

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