Formed in Detroit back in 2014, Nuke are a five piece speed metal band who have one aim – play hard, fast and loud. This self titled effort is their debut full length release and given the snippets they have released and premiered, it has a real intense and aggressive edge to it. Let’s see what happens when we drop this nuke.
The album is compact. Nine tracks and round the 40 minute mark in length, there is no surprises when it comes to how this band are going to play and from the opening track of “Nuke Me Baby”, you get the picture. Hard, fast and loose with some real anger issues and harsh tones, it plays out like Venom, Discharge, Motorhead and Slayer’s first album all thrown into a blender and then unleashed on the masses.
This filthy crust laden proto-thrash brand of speed metal does have some of the intricacies associated with Speed Metal – the riffs are quite compact, fast paced and in parts, extremely technical in terms of their execution and the rhythm section is blisteringly fast, but the sound, a huge wall of filth touching on many bands from the tail end of the 70’s and start of the 80’s seems to draw attention away from this. With its punk-like attitude and crusty sound, the supercharged proto metal onslaught occasionally ventures into the classic heavy metal territory. Tracks like “Hellrider” and “Dead Space” have real vibes of DiAnnio era Maiden in their delivery, sound and even some of the riffs whilst “The Queen” has a feel of Judas Priest to it.
However, despite these brief forays, this release predominantly focuses on the thrashier side of things. Fast as hell, uncompromising and dirty sounding, it is like a dirty bomb, ready to contaminate everything in its blast radius. With salutes to iconic names in the proto-metal, crust and thrash genres and some shameless Maiden guitar line worship, Nuke have cooked up a weapon of mass destruction which is sure to go off when dropped in the live setting.
(6/10 Fraggle)
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