Following their successful debut album,
Beware the Scythe, Chicago, Illinois' death rippers, Scythe, return once again with,
Subterranean Steel. Notably, this time around all of the songs are completely new, as the previous album featured left over Usurper material, as well as, some re-recorded tracks from Rick Scythe's sideproject, Nightshade. Also with this album, new drummer Joey Contreras steps in replacing Tim Pearson, although that hardly effects the overall sound as this is a similar Celtic Frost laced blackened death thrashing assault as before.
Once again the riffs and songs recall heavy metals past, bringing old school thrash, speed and traditional metal to the forefront and mixing it with a more aggressive death/black metal sound at times. Songs like,
The Grunting Dead or
Beyond the Northwoods sound very 80's proto 1st wave black metal-ish, while a song like,
The Bray Beast sounds more 80's thrash style, similar to Testament or Exodus.
Nights of Terror and
Subterranean Steel are further examples of just pure aggressive mad thrashin', and short but sweet pummelers like,
October Dies, make this record all the more fun and entertaining.
Surely the riffing is mostly simple and the solos don't appear to be overly complex either, but the good thing is the record feels more like a homage to metals past greats rather than feeling like a rip-off like so many other clowns these days. All in all though, this is a fun record, a party record, a bring your friends over, serve lots of booze, headbang and enjoy the shit outta this one kind o' record. Its one of those sorts of the records, and having recently seen the band live and getting completely wasted at said show I can assure it its that sort of music.
In the end, its a toss up whether I prefer this album or the debut. Either way,
Subterranean Steel, is a worthy and worthwhile second effort from these crazy bastards that I highly recommend getting your hands on.
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