So here we have the latest offering from Italian filthmongers Violentor, for those unfamiliar Violentor are a shamelessly old school thrash/punk crossover band.
I will never forget, I came across this band’s stuff for the first time when playing an Italian festival myself, drinking beer in the venue car park in the baking sun, huddled around a car stereo with a bunch of drunk Italian metalheads who spoke little English, bombarding me a load of underground extreme metal I had never heard. It was a great experience and the perfect setting for this sort of high energy filth, and I thought it was worth mentioning since that for me gives a solid idea of what this band are about.
There is a intro track of creepy old school horror movie music which is just long enough to allow you to put on your old Motorhead t shirt, crack open a cold beer and get ready to rock, and then it’s down to business.
From the outset this is a step up from their previous efforts, in terms of both production and song writing, but they have lost none of their aggressive edge, in fact quite the opposite, it has a seething angry attitude right from the off, and keeps the vibe going strong throughout.
The old school thrashing riffs and bile spewing, punk influenced vocals are brilliantly matched across the board, giving all of the material an instantly familiar vibe to any old school metal fan, whilst still managing to sound like a beast with its own identity at the same time.
This is a band that wear their old school influences on their sleeves rather than trying to hide it, and that is by no means a bad thing, but it’s funny in that when you can clearly hear a bit of Motorhead here and a bit of The Exploited there etc, but you can never really pin it down and say they sound like any particular band, they just sound like a little bit of several, but always sound like themselves.
Despite being ideal beer swilling party metal, there is a definite anger about the band, but there is some delightful song titles in here such as “Italian Bastards” and the winner of my straight to the point song title of the year “Cunts Must Die”, which whilst still extremely pumped offer a little pinch of comic relief from the otherwise pure torrent of rage on display here.
So if you are new to this band or not, there is not anything new or ground-breaking on this album, and nor should there be, this is old school metal with a fuck you attitude, and that’s all it ever needs to be.
(8/10 Mark Gleed)
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