Helstar - Glory of Chaos review

Year : 2010
Genre : Thrash Metal
Label : AFM Records
Origin : United States
Rating : 9.0 / 10

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Texan metal act Helstar brings you thrash as authentic as electricity since 1982, and, popping this 2010 gem into your music player device is the equivalent of releasing a testament on your hide that feeds from the most rabid and restless thrash ethos - the vintage thrash ethos - that in my opinion is currently conceivable.

Helstar's 2010 LP, Glory of Chaos, as mixed martial arts notability Don Frye would say, "is like prison sex : fast, hard and violent, and there is a lot of noise." Some noises are more than they sound as first though, and the situation is only partly similar herein, because this album wastes no moment to emerge as top of the food chain vintage thrash delicacy, regardless how it has been released in 2010.

Glory of Chaos brings the structure, along with the "mere" sound of the ethos we are talking about. What you hear on this release is supremely faithful to the most mythical / popular thrash releases. Megadeth's earlier work - Killing Is My Business, Rest In Pieces - and pretty much anything I currently know from Kreator comes to mind, though it seems safe to say that the teutonic thrashers are even more aggressive in nature than Megadeth is, for most of the time. Check out track number 2, called "Pandemonium" on this Helstar release, which is extremely similar to what an early Megadeth song tends to come through as, in my opinion. If someone would say to me : "this is a lost recording of early Megadeth ", I would totally believe it!!!!exclamation mark

Helstar, as an exigent and committed keeper of an ever-rabid style others have decided to venture away from, remains faithful to this vintage thrash ethos, and exhibits doubtless capacity to deliver material that emerges as pretty much equal to the classic-, aforementioned deliveries. Read on to find out how this release works.


It works as a tight vintage thrash release, of course : mid-tempo is very rare herein, while cunning and ferocity are both permanent companions. From a musical point of view, this is good old fashioned - not a negative notion in this regard - thrash sound operating via the genre's vibrant mechanics, and the collective timber of the release has awareness enough of its own nature to not include glitter and too massive presence of anything. The elements you hear on these tracks are absolutely well defined, but they do not seek to overwhelm you by their occupied volumetric proportions, they instead seek to form an intricately fragmented wall of sound experience in which the vocals can live in a raging hell without being endangered by their direct surroundings.

As hinted, the structures of the songs are quite similar to the meta-architecture established by deliveries that to this day outline the cream of this style, and, one is free to conclude with great delight that the presence of genuine musical effort and inventiveness is ubiquitous on the LP when scrutinized from the angle of ultimate value. Glory of Chaos has a playful fabric that never trades in the legit bite for alibi-technicality, while it also shows zero interest - OK, not shows - in going for the tolerance-hook.

One interesting attribute that separates this LP from its mythic predecessors is a pronounced tendency to sport vocals that border on aggressive, melodic power metal. The lead singer finds efficient notes - relating to the harmonies - to take them across interesting arcs and lengths, and has a reoccurring agenda to go Rob Halford at a couple of exceptional occasions. The power metal component should not make you believe that the release exhibits the fabric of a thrash / power hybrid, as this is not the case. Glory of Chaos is relentlessly thrash, and the vocals merely pack more propensity to exhibit uncensored vocal melody than the genre most often cares to tolerate.

Helstar's Glory of Chaos consciously resonates from a musical field that gave birth to the original form of thrash, and this-, pretty much scientifically cultivated, unconditional faithfulness necessarily guarantees a vintage thrash metal experience that gives no place to disappoint on. An immediate-, safe recommendation for every rabid fan of the genre.

Rating : 9.0 / 10

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Revocation - Chaos of Forms review

Year : 2011
Genre : Technical Death Thrash Metal
Label : Relapse
Origin : United States
Rating : 9.2 / 10

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Revocation is one super-eminent representative of a new breed of extreme music that sounds both relentlessly rabid AND eloquent at that. Everyone with imagination and ears accessible have the capacity to make up fine inner music that is out - oops - to destruct all things on sight, but the realization of such an avid flow of aural stimulus takes vast amount of diligent work. With its third full length silence massacre, Revocation unleashes monumental heft, and makes sure it does not lose steam during the 46 minutes it has the fuel for.

Chaos of Forms, in its mere nature, sounds to be a similar output than the latest of that of fellow thrasher group Deceased, in a sense that both installments consciously chose to utterly reject shortcuts and compositional methods a composer could live and sleep well without being voodooed by the masses. Instead, each and every second you will be graced with top of the heat sonic content that rains into you without any need on its part to rely on such standard presentational solutions as repetition or the introduction of "showsaver-hooks", so to speak. There is truly no need for them, if and when an entire album is one huge hook to pull you over its own body without inquiring about the state of your taste and safety. Read on to find out how this album kicks your ass a million ways in any given moment it rides on the volume by.


Revocation's Chaos of Forms is a bottomless treasure chest of superbly sculpted riffs and rhythms that know no no other King to bow down to than the mere flamboyancy they command to exist to triumph by. The intricacy of the content herein is so beautifully rabid and convoluted that the building blocks of one single track of the release could easily serve as a massive sequence in the body of a much less ambitious-, and STILL totally solid spin. The record simply can not be caught repeating itself, as delicious extremities are handing the door knob over to the other, always maintaining a continuous flow of sonic developments in which the common demeanor is the stone-sober faithfulness to seriously researched and manically presented intensity.

The album, needless to say, knows and brilliantly abuses every single mood of the extreme you have ever noticed to crave your attention, and it is the arrangements themselves that separate this record from the flock : you surely must have heard double bass before, but it is one thing to submit to its brutal charm having no gap to form an other choice on, and it is an entirely different matter to witness the double bass revealing its stupendous True Character, a much lifting result of avoiding the constant use of it. Revocation, quite wisely, keeps the double bass among the tools that guarantee the flawless operation of the 111% Thrashing Mode, and once it engages, it truly emerges as a row of mountain-sized bulldozers without drivers, rumbling into your awareness.

An important clarification needs to be made, and here it is : Chaos of Forms, in nature, is an extremely aggressive album, yet this is a rigorously and skillfully controlled, eloquent form of aggression that knows the limits and entertainment value of its respective charms well enough to not subject its absorber to any one those charms for too long. As such, there is a whole lot to be absorbed here, because every second of the release comes with the intent to present you stuff that is beyond doubt worth to be absorbed.

This is the shit.

The record has segments of monumental mid-tempos, exceptionally elegant guitar solos and some absolutely hilarious sequences that border on the vibe of easily accessible hard rock riding on an adrenalin rocket and waving two chainsaws, but bear in mind that these sequences are reigning way beyond the gesture of filling out the showtime with some cozily digestible stuff. Instead, whatever the band comes into contact with, it turns it into a golem of gold and commands it to thrash its surroundings ASAP.

With an immense aural contribution that pretty much cultivates a secret love for experimental extreme while remaining absolutely true to its primordial intent to flatten stuff out first, Revocation - Chaos of Forms is the extreme music you KNEW should have existed. Only know : it does.

Rating : 9.2 / 10

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