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BATTERY
Armed With Rage

Punishment 18 (2014)
Rating: 7/10

Battery is a Danish thrash band who’ve been making waves since their 2012 Mental Pollution EP. The band was formed in 2008 by drummer Andreas Joen and vocalist / guitarist Chris Steel after their previous outfit, Abattoir, disbanded. Since then they’ve released a trio of demos, the aforementioned EP, and now this, their first full-length album featuring ten solid thrash metal tunes.

Joen and Steel are joined by bassist Jannick Nielsen, rhythm guitarist Jeppe Campradt and a more recent acquisition Jökull Johanneson. Johanneson provides guitar, relieving Steel of his six-string duties to enable him to perform solely as a vocalist. Together, these musicians make a hell of a racket that is in fact surprisingly infectious, despite its generic nature.

This is very much American-styled thrash with a slight crossover tinge, mainly in the manic vocal preachings of Steel who has a strained yet effective style. Musically it’s solid, often beefy and well-produced thrash metal with the usual influences ranging from San Francisco Bay Area crunch, a sprig of Slayer, Dark Angel et al and even the more deathlier influence of Possessed – again in Steel’s vocals.

While this 11-track opus rattles by, there are nonetheless some catchy numbers which stick in the head, the best examples being the pacey ‘Pyramids Of Decept’, with its strong, yet smooth bass-lines, and the simmering menace of ‘Vermin Of Fukushima’, which begins as a Slayer-like dirge where Steel yelps “Born deep underground where monstrous forces are found” over what becomes a hyper chug-fest in true classic thrash style.

Lyrically the band is more than adequate, shifting between tales of society (“Brought into the daze, in the middle of a craze, Where clarity is scarce and waste, Made blind to see, sense and realism to be, Evil’s product of pure insanity”), the esoteric (“Knowledge hidden from the masses, to mesmerise while the herd”) and good ol’ fashioned horror (“Resurrection! Raise the army of the dead to slay and slaughter, the streets paved with blood”), as with the likes of ‘Zombestial Incantation’ and the war-torn mayhem of ‘Genocidal Gatlin Gunners’ where Steel rants of “Airborne slayers, taking their lives, brains upon the wall”.

Far from being the world’s most groundbreaking thrash album however, Armed With Rage is still a furious cauldron stirred by those frenzied guitars and rumbling drums which Joen can be commended for.

Whether this platter has enough legs to carry it beyond the hordes of other thrash bands piling onto the horizon we’ll just have to wait and see, but Armed With Rage boasts some very good numbers – my favourite being the no thrills disorder of ‘Indirect Oppression’ – which should provide 40 minutes of assault and battery to the senses.

Neil Arnold

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