Assassin - Breaking The Silence

Assassin has been inactive for some time; only recently in 2005 did this German metal band break the ice with an album since their 1989 release. With new funds and new perspective, the group was intent on coming back with a vengeance, and 'Breaking The Silence' states that vengeance is imminent. On one hand this thrashing machine tends to sound just like Slayer with Tom Arya-esque vocals and a rough and gritty sound that makes it seem like a time warp to the 80s, but Assassin don't kick things into overdrive like Slayer does. Instead, much of the music is very easy going, groovy, and sure to incite a lot of headbanging while shredding things up every once in a while with a good solo or two.

"Breaking The Silence" and "Raise In The Dark" are about the only Slayer clones of a track on the album due to their rapid pace, tendency to use repetitive riffs while expunging all the awesome guitar work on the solos. After this point, Assassin tends to fall more into their usual style, which is a churning, rhythmic style such as with "Judas" which opens with a great drum beat and then jumps more into a slower version of everything that has been heard before. "Turf War" makes a modern use of samples and crawling, lengthy closer with the drawn out riffs to try and vary things up- there is even some synth in there- but at the same time it feels like "Reign In Blood" performed backwards...

"Kill Or Be Killed" has an excellent rock sound to the music and strives more for a groove metal sound than typical thrash. At the same time, "Real Friends" starts out with an excellent groove with the drums, but then kind of falls back on the heavy riffs that populated the earlier tracks so much. "I Like Cola" is the fastest and craziest track on the album (nonsensical lyrics aside)- the vocals are opting for more like insane screaming compared to the usual barking- so it leaves the listener with quite a wild impression that the band is willing to go all out at times, even if it makes no sense at all in context with the rest of the album. However, it is good to see that these thrashers of old have still got it in them to make pretty decent music- the more groove laden the better.

  1. Breaking The Silence
  2. Raise In The Dark
  3. Judas
  4. Turf War
  5. Destroy The State
  6. No Fear
  7. Kill Or Be Killed
  8. Real Friends
  9. Strike Back
  10. I Like Cola