Mushroom Cloud, a trio hailing from Aarhus, Denmark, comprises of founding members Dmitriy Mukhamedov on guitars and Simon Kristensen on the drums with vocalist Morten Thoft Langerhuus joining the band a year into their existence. Style-wise they are a thrashy melodic death concoction which they pull off extremely well.
The gently picked intro that is “Time To Shine” quickly has a guitar lead come in to become the focus of the track as the remainder of instruments are layered in as it runs into “Purifire” where Morten alternates between clean melodic and abrasively growled vocals to go with clean guitar bridges and the heavy thrash riffing.
Back to a heavily 80’s influenced drum battering, “Broken Record” has a nice steady, churning guitar rhythm that flows well under the vocals as they raise to a roar as the song ends.
Morten’s spat out aggression on “Follow The Blind” is reminiscent of Kreator’s Mille Petrozza, while Dmitriy’s guitar lead could even rival one of Sami Yli-Sirniö’s.
“Needless Fight” is one of their more emotive songs with a relatively straight forward guitar riff allowing the vocals to carry the emotional load, even though the lead does a pretty good job too.
Simon’s cymbal brushing gives way to a battery as the guitar riff kicks into full gear on “American Genius” along with the alternating heavy then melodic vocals to keep the song dynamic and changing, whereas “Final Cut (Apple Pie)” starts off more rock ‘n rolly in feel and while it gets a little heavier, that base remains.
Some clever tempo changes on “Fuck Alt Delete” really get it going, in much the same way the lead break just keeps climbing to heights unreached thus far.
“Bipolar” contains some very decent death vocals along with doomy gothic ones when the guitars fade to almost nothing then back to throaty roars to portray the anguish in the protagonist’s dilemma.
Ending the album the way it began with a slow lead over picked guitar “No Escape” does however start off much faster and heavier with a catchy riff that chops and changes ’til the point where it fades into the outro.
Only think I’m not really too sure about is the album title… Lost in translation perhaps.
(7/10 – Marco Gaminara)
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