Welcome to the meandering musical insights of Aaron Joy (me!), formerly known as the Roman Midnight Music Blog. Here you'll find nearly 750 reviews of CDs & DVDs of rock & metal in all its variations, mainstream & indie, good & bad, U.S. & foreign. A new review every Monday.

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January 3, 2012

Shrapnel ~ The Devastation To Come (EP) (album review) ... Don't forget to pick up the pieces after!


Style: thrash, heavy metal, speed metal
Label: self-released
Year: 2010
Home: England

Members:Jim Hadley ~ vocals
Nathan Sadd ~ guitars
Chris Martin ~ rhythm guitar
Chris Williams ~ drums
Adam Read ~ bass

British quintet Shrapnel have put out a killer four song thrash attack of the Slayer-Anthrax & early Metallica variety. It's amazing, let alone at times nearly unbelievable considering how music changes styles every decade, to hear this style of early thrash, aka pre-black album Metallica, still being saluted through imitation almost three decades after it debuted. I mean, for example, except for some small circles disco & rockabilly have both gone extinct on the mainstream. But, yet, the fierce speed metal/thrash spearheaded by the San Francisco Big Four lives on through multiple generations of followers with as much relevance, fierceness & energy as ever & a modern edge as relevant as Jay Z or the Arctic Monkeys. What's also amazing is not just how the music still thrives in a pure form but also how it's gone international. Shrapnel from Norwich, England are like the Rolling Stones in the 60's ... listening to the music coming over the ocean & wanting to play what they hear with little interpretation. If one listens to the first five Rolling Stones albums its all imitation of the American blues. Shrapnel is at that point in their musical career. "Eternal War", "Toxic Slaughter", "Comatose" & "Hammer Blow" are all heavy stompers with hypnotic rhythms & a powerful low-end. The slower "Comatose", my favorite in the line-up, sounds like a mass of marching evil robots with each foot pounding the ground in haunting sync. The Big Four don't even sound this pure when they rock & thus its shocking to hear Shrapnel & be suddenly reminded how far thrash has moved in the hands of the Big Four & how it once sounded so fierce ... a fierceness now in the hands of a new generation of metalheads. Keep rocking boys.

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