A time has come as beloved musical movements from our youth (if you’re my vintage and do not ask as offense may be taken ha) are coming round again with monikers like NWOTM of which this album is one of the latest. So for the uninitiated, and those who may have been living under a rock it is New Wave Of Thrash Metal. Quite a few of you reading this will be rolling your eyes and thinking Thrash has never really gone away how could this possibly be a valid musical Genre. Well, sit back take a sip of your hot beverage of choice and listen. Where Thrash in its musical form may never really have changed, when played by the bands we all love. It has stood still and in some cases gone backward and stopped innovating.
Enter stage left the children of the old guard bringing with them new ideas new technics and the boundless energy of youth. They keep the speed, the aggression of their forbears, and diversity of lyrical themes with the downright brutality that shook the Metal world back in the dawn of time.
Here is where the New wave part kicks in, Bands like Live Wire from Sydney with their latest release Under Attack have blended the aggression that underpins so much of the original US thrash with so much speed it almost nose bleed time. It is 48 minutes in length but it feels like 5.
I had the privilege to see the boys in action a year or so ago and they put as much energy into their live show as they do in this debut album. It dips its toes firmly in the Dragon Force, Gamma Ray camp, with its flamboyant over-engineered verbosity.
This is not a negative just underlines my original very point succinctly bands like LiveWire are taking the behemoth and aged Thrash scene and are pushing forward in modern and fresh directions. Not to say this album is a shining light in the new world order. It has its flaws the vocal is mixed far too far back and sometimes when you think the song needs some grinding down picking you just get more speed. But these are small quibbles. As first albums go it’s a corker with tracks like Lock Jaw death Roll you really feel the DNA of Thrash bleeding through. Hang around long enough and on the streaming version, you are treated to 4 delicious tracks that are not on the physical medium.
(I will not spoil it for you just go and see for selves).
So in summing up these young men from sunny Sydney have managed to pack breakneck speed guitar wizardry, dark heavy riffs, and screaming Priest inspired vocals to make one fun album that you will not be surprised goes ballistic in all sensible record-buying markets around the world.
VIVA THE NEW BLOOD
LiveWire: Facebook
Release Year: 2022
Label: self-released
Category: Album
Country: Australia
Reviewed by Tony Evans
