REVIEW: Hirax - Immortal Legacy Metal Wani (Bangalore, India). Rating - 8.5/10 metalwani/2014/03/review-hirax-immortal-legacy.html A career in music is one that has always concocted a dubious mind frame in the pilgrims that harbored any kind of inclination to walk down the ‘path’. Such dreams might even christen a feeling of intense chagrin and anger in those with proclivities to the more extreme side of music, given the handful of heavy metal bands that have actively made it in the business. Katon W. De Pena is a man that has resurrected after being repeatedly crucified on the cross of thrash metal obscurity for the better part of 30 years.Whether it was with Hirax or his side project Phantasm which was formed circa the late 80’s with Ron McGovney (ex Metallica), he has zealously donned the role of a demiurge strictly constricting his thoughts towards raising the flag of thrash metal to his point of untethered saturation. On the 24th of February, Hirax, via Steamhammer records released their fifth album and their first album with the same line-up as their previous opus (save for a guitarist), entitled ‘Immortal Legacy’. This album follows the footsteps of its predecessors and delves into 50 minutes of cranium splitting, concrete thrashing ecstasy.The lead guitar parts are technically adroit with appearances from Jim Durkin (Dark Angel), Rocky George (Suicidal Tendencies) and Juan Garcia (Agent Steel), but the rhythm section is what gives the album its skull crushing allure. Axe welder Lance ‘Shred Barron’ Harrison’s riffs are unique and stand apart in their variety with respect to tempo and texture while still maintaining the generic thrashy overtones which the band helped solidify back in the early 80’s. The album opener, entitled ‘Black Smoke’ opens with a classic metal lick, followed by an onslaught on the auditory nerves with its machine gun drum beats and guitaring followed by an ominous decrease in tempo accompanied by palm muted chugs with a police siren wailing in the background.‘Victims of the Dead’ embraces a more new age thrash metal style in its song structure ushering galloping riffs that have leanings towards a mid-paced sinister frame of mind.If threatened to the point of castration over selecting one song out of the 12, it would have to be ‘Deceiver’. The track is a 4 minute no frill-policied barrageof palm muted alternate picking accompanied by fast double bass drumming, with Pena’s thrash infused operatic vocals and a face melting solo. There are also certain snippets of neo-classical brilliance and progressive NWOBHM influences in the album with ‘Atlantis’,’ SOW’ and ‘Earthshaker’, all three of which are short instrumentals provided to disgorge any monotony that could have frothed owing to the unesotericnature of the genre. The title track spews out riffs that are menacingly foreboding which are gratingly textured alongside Pena’s uvula shattering screams. The production is quite murky and does not embody the razor sharp crispness which defines a standard thrash metal album. This might suggest a strange perversion of the natural order and thoughts apropos to the previous statement did cloud my mind, but after a while, the senses seemed to engorge the putrid aesthetic of the album with the exception of the fast double bass spurts, which I felt were too muddy and needed to be a bit more savage, keeping in mind the rancid dynamic the album is supposed to maintain. Pena’s voice manifests the more melodic side of the panorama of thrash metal vocals. The song writing on this album is magnificent, going beyond the confines of the genre and harnessing a variety of tempo changes, melodically discordant chord progressions and intoxicating solos to create a masterpiece. Certain songs have an anthemic quality to them such as ‘Tied To The Gallows Pole’ on one hand and on the other, there are the quintessential 3 minute punk infused malevolent cries such as ‘Violence of Action’. Rather than merely conjuring up half-forgotten imagery of days past like many thrash metal archons, Pena has managed to gather a formidable line-up, and the quartet traffic in hostile, intestine churning thrash thus marking the commencement of an epoch, long overdue and lingering in the dark underground for close to 3 decades. Un-waivered by the recurring travails of line-up changes and financial constraints, Hirax have managed to chew into the minds of the faithful, hurl masterpiece after masterpiece and cultivate a cult fanbase that has prowled into every corner of the world, with Phillip Lawvere coming out of retirement and throwing himself on the canvas to construct what would be the cover for this album. Being a thrash aficionado myself, I am very much looking forward to their next album which hopefully will contain the same brand of terror inducing and power ensnaring thrash. Reviewed By, Rohan Thomas.
Posted on: Fri, 14 Mar 2014 17:54:25 +0000
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