Swedish something or others Sulfuric have been around for a little while. I’d have never guessed Sweden but here we are. Rather sounding Brazilian or even Japanese, their ambitious yet ultimately accessible blend of thrash, black, and heavy metal, and sporadic d-beat, has all the hallmarks of what makes Midnight and Hellripper household names on the scene. One would be surprised at a first listen that Sulfuric are not much better known indeed – but one glance at their cover art would absolutely give out why. What can I say, it’s just sort of…awkward and negligible.
Ten tracker Macabre Festivities starts off strong with a piece of the same name, and gets even stronger by the second track Hunter Killers, with the catchiness – and speed culminating in the third one, The Manslayer. This is such a classically enjoyable piece that has a bit of everything – jazzy riffs, epic riffs, speed freak riffs, you get the gist. Add to that the technical diversity of the vocals and the drums, and you get a perfect trifecta of insane musical goodness. I’d say this is more thrash than black metal, but the d-beat elements bring it back to the darker side of the gloom.
The catchiness does decline about halfway through. By fourth track Cannon Fodder, a classic straight up thrash metal piece, the musical diversity begins to disappear – and fast. It contributes a lot to a loss of interest and listenership. Next piece, The Oak Tree is somewhat slower – or, “aha, see what I did there? I fooled you, you fool”! I’m guessing this is what Sulfuric was thinking when they put a fast Hellripper-esque bit towards the end of the piece – and then it goes back to being Kreator on an off day.
Following on, we have more straight up thrash metal with small glimpses of black metal interwoven, but the d-beat and heavy metal elements are missing more and more. Their decline becomes most prominent in track six Writing In Disbelief. There is a correlation here, if you will: the more and more thrash Macabre Festivities becomes and the more and more the heavy and punk elements disappear, the more uninspired the record sounds. This also coincides with middling pieces getting more bass heavy, with the slaps being so pronounced they could rival Davey504’s. While Sulfuric has been universally described as thrash black metal, they are actually soft on the black metal elements. However, the sporadic blast beats in Dark Desires are rather refreshing, and I wish there was more of them throughout.
The heavy metal and d-beat elements don’t re-emerge until track nine Bavarian Nightmares. But when they do – they do so with a bang, a crank, a boomshanka! of the highest rank. I love the riff modulations in this piece. It’s easily the best track of the second half of the album, and at just 2:37 minutes, it’s infinitely replayable. And so is the album – at 33 minutes and 3 secs (I need to know what’s the significance of the 3s), it tends to easily loop round before one catches on.
Midnight Festivities closes off with Sulfuric Might, which, while I wouldn’t consider to be as strong an ending as Bavarian Nightmares could have been, is a classic mosh pit anthem, and I can very much picture myself in the midst of it…angrily pushing moshing masses away while scowling like a post-temper tantrum toddler. Hey, Sulfuric: come to the UK. We have shortbread – and the New Cross Inn.
(7.5/10 The Flâneur)
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