Deströyer 666 – Wildfire. (Season of Mist, 2016).
Another Deströyer 666 album has arrived, and it is delivering the goods. A solid slab of sadistic thrashing savagery by the Lords of the Wild waits. Tearing it up first with Traitor and Live And Burn, two hard-rocking songs that live up to the Deströyer standard, there are solos and falsetto screams in decent doses to help with the headbanging mania that you should find yourself consumed by. After these relatively lighter bursts, the mood darkens with the sinister Artiglio del Diavolo (Devil’s Claw) instrumental, which is followed by the anthem-like Hounds At Ya Back, a militant declaration of independence with a beautiful introduction that is propelled forwards by well-disciplined drumming and powerful riffing, and later on the fantastic Hymns to Dionysus– a suitable musical exploration for a god that was feared as much as worshipped by the ancients, being that it manages to interlace well the mystery, foreboding, danger, and sweet temptation that this god of drama and drink could evoke, with the underlying madness in the music that saw the maenads tear King Pentheus apart. Following on from this, there is plenty of thrashing, especially with the catchy, testosterone-laced title track. The concluding track Taman Shud is a powerful, epic track evocative of classic Deströyer epics and fitting well alongside past songs like Trialled By Fire– it is an epic, melancholic song well fitting the lyrics of the song and the inspiration, whether that be the segment of the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam quoted or the unsolved death associated with the poem from Australia in 1948. This album is a fantastic new start of sorts, as this is KK bringing Deströyer 666 back without Shrapnel, the first line-up without Shrapnel since Unchain the Wolves. The new line-up definitely gels well together, and the spirit of the wolf is definitely strong on this album. Whilst potentially not as rabid in parts as Defiance was, it definitely delivers well on great, balls-out rocking tracks, driven forth by great drumming. Indeed, whilst perhaps not as aggressive when compared to older songs such as The Barricades Are Breaking, it overall does sound more like the march of magnanimous monarchs. It is a triumphant return of KK Warslut, and bound to be in the top 10 releases of 2016. The production is pretty good, with the guitars being loud but not drowning out the drums, and solos not drowning out the beautiful melodious riffs beneath.
9/10.
SADISTIC SCREAMS 