Deathonator - Laughing At You

Italian groove thrash with a flavour of crossover vocally sounds about a good summary for this bands first full release. The only real downside is that it suffers is from the weak vocals. They try to do various ranges; they fall short of real projection though and seem to run out of steam. However, musically and the songs themselves, you cannot go far wrong for creativity even if the recording does sound rather thin and flat.

The end of the track ‘Mirror’ sounds very expansive actually; whilst the earlier pieces of this track range from groovy thrash to possessing hardcore inspiration and the power screams remind you of Gama Bomb and this is probably where they get most of their thrash influences from. Some quarters are arranged a little chaotically, there are pieces that change time that don’t really fit with the rest of the arrangement and almost provide a stop/start response within the same track. Then the Pantera groove becomes a little more obvious when you get to ‘Punishment’ with a couple of pinch harmonics added to the thrashier momentum that’s mixed with a groove ridden chorus that’s also the case during their signature tune ‘Deathonated’.

There are a fair few ideas knocking around, but they don’t necessarily fit all in the same release, certainly not within the same song without greater flow. That said, it’s ballsy to do this, but thrash fans will have to work hard on this release and pick out the best bits for themselves, which is going to be a hard task in this age of easy access to music.