Ελληνικά
Genre: Speed/Thrash
Country: Germany
Label: Metal Blade Records
Year :2021
Vulture was the next big thing in the thrash revival a couple of years ago. Don’t ask me which revival was, the 3rd or 5th, cause I stopped counting a lot of years ago. The speed demons from Dortmund, North Rhine-Westphalia after the glorious 2016’s “Victim to the Blade” 3+1-track EP and an equal impressive 2017’s debut “The Guillotine” in the small yet high prolific High Roller Records jumped into Metal Blade, but their previous and sophomore studio album didn’t put them on the elite. It was actually a very good album as “Ghastly Waves And Battered Graves” (2019) offered a plethora of speed/thrash hymns like “Fed to Sharks” or “Murderous Militia”, but unfortunately the LP didn’t change the band’s status. Now Vulture return inspired by horror like themes, paranoia, mythological creatures such as ancient Greek Medusa, ghosts, demons, the vicious Roman emperor Caligula and Edgar Allen Poe’s The Pit And The Pendulum, creating another gem for the genre. Entitled “Dealin’ Death” their new album is like the band is going back to its roots. As their guitarist Stefan Castevet comments: “The result sounds a little ‘back to the EP-ish’ to my ears, yet it contains new approaches that we’ve never included in our sound so far, like choirs with harmonies.” While they remain proud of the mighty “Ghastly Waves And Battered Waves” they acknowledge it did not come together quite as planned, and this was something they were looking to correct with its successor”. Truth be told in their third album the song structure is more simple and they mostly focus on creating memorable choruses. Not that the riffage isn’t once again present or less filthy. Besides the fierce riffing, all of their characteristics are here:the halftone-shifts, the aggressive vocals, the huge toms, the changing dynamics, the horror-synths and the twin guitar harmonies. All given in a totally 80’s atmosphere in the veins of vintage video horror movies and a sense of a Whiplash’s, Exciter’s or even Nasty Savage’s album of the mid-80’s. The line-fi production (the album was recorded at Monkey Moon Studios in Dortmund by Alexander Stöcker, the guitarist of Stallion, while the production was once more handled by Marco Brinkmann at Hellforge Studio) fits like a glove to their sound. Grab without second thought “Dealin’ Death”, an album created by heart and adrenaline explosion from 5 guys that have nothing to prove to anyone, but themselves. Highlights: “Multitudes of Terror,” “Below the Mausoleum,” “Gorgon,” the King Diamond influenced “Star-Crossed City,” the punkish “Flee The Phantom” and the “strange” mid-tempo closer, “The Court Of Caligula” that is a far cry from trash, but it’s stucked to my brain.
