The Wild Stream of Eternal Sin

I like heavy riffs. I like pummeling drums. I like lightning fast guitar solos. In other words, I like metal. That being said, I'm not easily satisfied. If you show me some average metal band somewhere, I'll likely just yawn and check my watch. Yeah that guitar chord might sound nice, but are you actually doing anything interesting with it? It's not enough to just sound metal to really get my blood pumping. So believe me, I'm generally not the kind of person that describes albums in terms like "fucking crushing" or "pure fucking headbanging goodness." However when it comes to this Terror Squad album, it's truly best described as "metal as fuck."

Terror Squad is very much a case of "why didn't I check this out earlier" for me. I was aware of them for years, but never actually got around to picking up any of their albums. Finally on one fateful day, I had a good chance to take the plunge and boy am I glad I did. The Wild Stream of Eternal Sin is more or less thrash/death metal with a strong crossover streak. On the thrash spectrum, it fits in very snugly with the most aggressive thrash albums out there. The vocalist, Kouichi Udagawa, doesn't sing a single word here. It's all full on harsh vocals that mostly hover in a midrange pitch (with some screams thrown in). At a very short runtime, slightly less than 29 minutes, there's no time to fuck around. It's just full on, pummeling thrash from start to finish.

However like I said earlier, I'm not the kind of listener that's just easily satisfied by anything that happens to be heavy. Bland thrash that chugs only a few power chords is actually one of my most hated metal cliches out there. What sets Terror Squad apart is that they are extremely creative. In the seemingly limited framework of death/thrash, they manage to consistently craft "metal as fuck" songs and pound your skull in from start to finish. And they manage do this without even once feeling stale or tired. Every one of the seven songs crushes, but they do so in different ways.

The reason for the success is simple: the riffs are just fucking awesome. Even though there isn't a single song on here that passes the 5 minute mark, each one is completely loaded from top to bottom with riffs. And literally every single one is just so damn good. Many metal bands struggle to come up with one good riff, but Keiji Ohzeki just casually drops a bazillion different ones on you. Not a single riff feels misplaced or half-baked. They all flow together and just force you to headbang along. As a bonus, most of the guitarwork has a strong technical bent to it and is actually fairly complex. There's some unusual ideas and guitarwork that pop up from time to time with some usage of dissonance or soloing sections that hearken more melody than usual. This sort of foreshadows the more unusual technical approach the band would take on the second album.

Of course, the guitarwork is the main reason why this album kicks ass, but everyone else deserves praise as well. The drumming is pleasantly in that slightly-sloppy-but-just-right range, you want for aggressive thrash like this. The vocals are surprisingly fairly catchy and show a great sense of rhythm. Like any good thrash metal vocalist, the vocal lines enhance the backing riffs and simply just make things even more metal than they already were. As a pleasant surprise, the bass guitar is fairly audible and provides a really good low end. It gets some occasional digs, but mostly bottoms out the sound in a nice way.

But at its core, this album is a riff machine. On the surface, that description does not seem very noteworthy. Tons of bands have gone for that approach with varying levels of success. However, Terror Squad is truly exceptional on this front. If you just want in-your-face, unforgiving thrash metal, this right here is your album. The best way to describe this album is honestly with the typical metal cliches we've all heard a million times before. The Wild Stream of Eternal Sin slays, crushes, pulverizes, destroys, pounds, and tramples all over the listener. Listening to this album causes the iron levels in your blood to double. You might have to go to your doctor to get your neck checked after listening to the album. In short, The Wild Stream of Eternal Sin is just pure fucking headbanging metal goodness that any self-respecting metalhead will love.

Originally written for my blog.

Terror Squad - another Japanese band that manages to impress. I'm becoming increasingly enamored with Japanese metal.

This is no-bullshit, death tinged thrash with some pleasantly unique and quirky guitar work.

Artillery fans will probably be inclined, like myself, to believe the band took their name from Artillery's Terror Squad album. This argument might be corroborated by the fact that the band sounds like Artillery doing death/thrash in fast motion.

At 28 minutes, with only 7 tracks, there is little time for this album to fuck around. The drumming is very fast, tight, fairly rhythmic (considering it's thrash especially) and even complex at times. Guitar melodies and solos fly out of no where at 666 mph, and are just all the sweeter because of the choas they emerge from. Pure unbridled metalness oozes from relentless, at times complex rhythm guitar, quirky, chromatic leads, moments of sweet melody, pinch harmonics, and simply fuckin' killer thrash/death riffage.

The only thing I could possibly compare the riffs to is the more technical end of Destruction, or Artillery ... though that hardly does justice to most of the music.

Low and high screams trade on and off at high speeds. The bass can be found in the production as well. The production over all is pretty much spot on. I really have no complaints about this album.

In many ways, this is one of the best thrash albums I've ever heard. Intense, technical, catchy, melodic, unique - what more could you want?

This is one of those albums that's so metal it just makes you want to shatter objects with your head and use the pile driver on hippies while on a concrete surface. This album is so metal that it will make your ears bleed, turn you blood to ice, and transform all your attire into leather, spikes and bulletbelts. Get it, now!