Hooooo-kaaaaaay. Polish band called Driller, sporting one of the worst covers I’ve seen in an absolute age and with song titles (that aren’t covers) of the likes of ‘Pleasure To Kill’, ‘Judgement Day’, ‘Madness Inc.’ and ‘Zombie Invaders’. Can you guess…? Go on, leap on the dark time I know but take a guess….
Yep more latecomers to the thrash party. The beer’s been drunk, someone’s puked on the bathroom floor, the pizza is one big ashtray and your boyfriend/girlfriend has got off with some douchebag who said they were ‘in a band’. So can Driller kick-start this mess? Can we have fun again?
Well ‘Zombie Invaders’ scares the hell out of me for a start when the fairly traditional thrash start suddenly, fucking gloriously, bursts into a hugely melodic bit of speed metal. For those fleeting moments I’m in heaven chowing down on brains. The rest is good but generic thrash with the modern death metal spine a lot have now. Which also kind of sums up next song ‘Judgement Day’: Sparkly lead breaks over fairly generic but enthusiastic thrash, gruff vocals, bit of Metallica at the end, that kind of thing. And I seriously do wonder at a thrash band actually calling a song ‘Pleasure To Kill’ when it isn’t a cover but still has a Kreator feel to it. Bit like writing a new song called ‘Motorhead’. Speaking of which…. ‘Rock n Rolla’ just goes full tilt speed metal, Speedwolf and Motorhead style, and just pounds everything else they’ve done so far into a red squishy mess on the highway. Oh and somewhat curiously they also push a bit of pig squealing deathgrind on us with ‘Big (pig) big’ which sounds like it should be on another album, or some sections of the band wanting to make a point about where they think the sound should be going.
Hmm.
Now this is Driller’s debut but it sounds like that old chestnut of two bands trying to find common ground by now. On the one hand we have pretty generic modern (ie death and grind influenced) thrash and on the other hand all the lovely melodic goodness of a tuneful and, gasp, catchy heads down headbang ’til you drop speed metal band. Yes I have my favourite side but regardless they at least need to pick a direction because at the moment this sounds more like a split release.
Kudos to the guys for getting this down and out, and more props because I have that old squirming feeling that Driller could be great fun metal if they fully looked in one direction or the other as they have a nice tight-but-loose feel to their playing which I love. But at the moment, sorry but this is just too patchy, schizophrenic and a little too generic. Would be interested to see what they do next though.
But the Gene Kelly ‘cover’ ‘Screaming In The Rain’? No. Not really.
By the way, is it just me or does this pizza taste funny?
(4/10 Gizmo)
https://myspace.com/drillertheband
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