|
Tanks are unrelenting steel behemoths, designed solely to destroy and strike fear into their opposition so an album title such as Panzer Metal instantly evokes these connotations with the music. Anything less than pure brutality just wouldn't seem right. Just think back to Marduk's landmark Panzer Division Marduk for a prime example of this form of unrelentingly brutal sonic war machine. Now Negator returns after five years with this uncompromising blitzkrieg of black metal, their third album Panzer Metal.
This is true, aggressive black metal with blistering guitar work and precision drumming. The musicianship throughout the album is superb with the machine gun drumming in particular a real highlight. Honestly, try keeping your legs still when that kick drum lets rip – impossible!
The vocals are perfect black metal screams that put several of the better known vocalists to shame. They aren't perhaps the most decipherable vocals ever but since when has this mattered in black metal? The vocals are in perfect harmony with the music and are as cold and harsh as a massed armour charge.
Panzer Metal lives up to all expectations and surpasses them in every possible way. For fans of nineties black metal this album will be perfect. It evokes all the feel of Norwegian black metal, combines it with the ferocity of bands such as Marduk and Imperial Crystalline Entombment and is well produced with a crisp sound courtesy of Eike Freese (Dark Age, Callejon, Gamma Ray).
This album is not ground-breaking, nor is it a new sound within this genre. What it is is quite simply the old way perfected. If Panzer Division Marduk was the King Tiger of World War 2, Panzer Metal is the M1-Abrams, the Challenger 2 or the Leopard 2-A6. A pure destructive force launching a lightning war through your speakers. Prepare to be crushed.
|
|
