Thanatos – Violent Death Rituals

Thanatos are a death/thrash pioneers and the very first extreme metal band to come from The Netherlands. They are now celebrating 35 years of full death/thrash metal dedication and passion with the release of a new 10-tracker entitled Violent Death Rituals. The album (their seventh) is a pure catchy extreme madness. Thanatos are still very true to their own roots and musical background, still performing a stamping, catchy, relentless and heartbreaking extreme metal in its pure form.

Violent Death Rituals kicks off with a title-track which has this progressive and calm start before exploding into a full-blown death metal assault. The same pattern is on a second track called “The Silent War” just by adding some more thrash elements. This song has less of a build-up, but the balance in tune is kept really good. The vocals are clear, crisp and aggressive.

Third song “Unholy Predators” keeps up the pace set with the two previous tracks in the beginning of the track, but towards the end it changes to a prog beat with a few nice guitar sections.

“The Outer Darkness” is the next song in line, a natural progression from where the previous one left off – another decent song. “Burn The Books Of Hate” somehow closes the first half of this lengthy record. It has the same elements as the last few song, but with less aggression than before.

“It Always Ends In Blood” takes the pace up by adding some more technical parts here. It has enough aggression and experimental elements to stir up the overall feel.

“Corporate Indoctrination” comes next and I must say that it is one of the best tracks on the album. It feels thicker and heavier, with a nice build-up of the pace and aggression. This track is exactly what the album needed! “Sent From Hell (I Infidel)” starts again off with the progressive intro. The song has again a rather slow and emotional start for taking the end of the album into a high pace.

“Legacy Of The Gods” is yet another song is building within itself, but seems to lack some intensity and a climax. The closing track “As The Cannons Fade” on the other hand has this pace that is gradually picking, although I don’t see the reason for having the longest track off the album as the ending track?! It is definitely a good song, but it is a bit misplaced.

A trend of switching between death metal-oriented and those more thrashier songs is something that you can hear throughout the whole record. It means that Violent Death Rituals never tends of getting boring or repetitive. They know what they’re good at, producing some killer death fuckin’ thrash since 1984, so why change anything?

With the release of Violent Death Rituals these guys have made a varied and vicious album, and they’re not showing any signs of slowing down anytime soon. This is a high-quality record that is spiked with 10 death/thrash tracks recommended to any thrash/death metal fan.

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