Exmortus-In hatreds flame

Heavy Artillery
2008

New York based label Heavy Artillery are a label I have been rooting for because they are relatively small, fairly new and they really seem enthusiastic about what they are doing. Avenger of blood, Merciless Death and Phantom Witch have all released albums on this label so far and all are above average, but all rather routine entries in the retro-thrash movement. LA's Exmortus are perhaps the first real legitimately interesting band to emerge under the Heavy Artillery label. These guys come across as technical death metal if that genre had been fleshed out around 1990 instead of later than that. That's not to say it's dated but rather that it's more thrash oriented than many of today's acts who fall under the technical death metal flag. The approach here sounds like Slayer mixed with early death metal like Obituary and Deicide with swirls of Iron Maiden, Helloween and some early Yngwie Malmsteen mixed in. Somehow the way the heavy riffs whip around reminds me of New Jersey's often overlooked Whiplash as well. Okay, this approach has been done before and much like the thrash revival they are highly influenced by older acts. However, how they mix the influences is the difference because the type of bands they are influenced by are more varied and so is their general approach. Add on top of that the fact that they have several songs where they are just downright brutal with how they attack their songs and you have a band with some legitimate potential. Now they also hit upon some rather standard tracks as well and they need to flesh out some of their ideas a little more. Yet there's no doubt that Exmortus are digging deeper than a lot of the younger thrash bands emerging today who are completely content to just imitate the ideas of two or three bands whose peak happened before 1991. No, I think this band has managed to do enough to move beyond a simple category and their riff heavy, real metal driven style has helped to make an impression. Most of their songs are about battles and war and on "In hatreds flame" they spend a great deal of time sounding like they are tearing into battle with a bone shattering ferocity. What they do from here is up to them, but I am certainly anxious to see where they go from here. This is actually a re-release that includes eleven tracks as the original only had seven and was released last year.


http://www.myspace.com/exmortus