Review Assassin - Breaking the Silence 2011

The Terminator is obviously my first though as I take a look at the cover from Assassins new album. And it doesn’t make me think differently when looking at the titles to the tracks because except for the song called Judas it almost gives a thematic feel about that movie series… that’s until you reach the final song. What the hell were they thinking when they make a song and call it I Like Cola?
It’s coming a lot of thrash here around the year shift. Most albums are released by artists with at least a 20 year long history and to this group of bands the German band Assassin also belongs, celebrating their 27th year as a band (25 as album releasing band) with ‘Breaking the Silence’ – the first album in six years, and only the fourth full length album since they started. Dispite only three albums in the bag, Assassin is seen as one of Germanys “Big four”, you know the expression used originally in USA on Metallica, Slayer, megadeth and Anthrax as the big four bands in thrash (knocking off bands like Testament, Death Angel, Exodus, Overkill, Hirax, Lääz Rockit and so on). The German equality is Sodom, Tankard, Destruction and then Assassin of course, and to complete that trio is actually kind to Assassin as they have the doubtless smallest part in the quartet, so the bigger the reason is for them to proof something with ‘Breaking the Silence’.

As Halloweds biggerst thrash enthusiast at the moment, I used my jaws to chew through the ’Breaking the Silence’ cola and what I felt was that whoever the baker was he had left pieces of human cadavers in the grease. A bone here, a tooth there and whoever hadn’t chest hair before ‘Breaking the Silence’ will indubitably get some after plowing through 10 songs of hardcorem German thrash metal of the 80’s. Go! Fight! Kill! As it say in the information sheet us journalists get feels like a pretty good explanation of the whole musical idea of Assassin. “Go, fight and kill – that’s what we’ll do to the listeners” is how the band resonate, probably , and they’re not far from proving their point. They burn through their music in top speed and does so with the shittiest sound of sounds imaginable. It’s like they’re in the sty playing instruments made from pig shit. A really, really shitty sound, in other words.

Personally, I think you should use the fact that technical progress is made, but I know there’s a side just as big maintaining the opposite. People that still use casettes and vinyls, that take their pictures with 135mm film and watch VHS is completely okay for me, but when it comes to music there is such a big difference between what’s been recorded with new and updated equipment and what’s been recorded by what was available 30 years ago. That’s why albums that sounds like this one mostly end up giving me head ache – not by the music in itself, but because of the shitty sound quality. It’s absolutely no exaggeration when I say it sounds exactly as things did in the 80’s, probably because they still use the same instruments, the same amplifiers and the same studio equipment as they did back then. The songs are made in the exact same way, and except for the nuthead I Like Cola, whom they play last in line, the songs on this album is more or less identical. The same guitar riffs, the same vocal style, same structure, same theme and the same sound. Not just the same as eachother, but just the same as on the albums they released back in the 80’s as well. I still haven’t heard the last album before this, but as it’s self-financed and self-released and not very easy to get your hands on if you’re not very interested – I have a good excuse. I would guess SPV will release the album sooner or later anyway, with eleven bonus tracks and a documentary telling us how fucking great they were back in the good old days when they and Angel Dust (the band that in the late 90’s and early 00’s released a series of albums totally thrashing all the German thrash bands) shared stage with the other three big German thrash bands. Not that I really believe they will menthion Angel Dust, but otherwise it wouldn’t surprise me.

Anyway, I can blabber on forever, but the truth is that there isn’t that much more to say about Assassins ’Breaking the Silence’ than it is an album 100% for you if you’re in to the 80’s thrash scene. If you don’t like that it’s not for you. An album with a target group so obvious it’s almost unnecessary to write more than “Thrash metal” in the review.

HHHHHHH

Assassin Breaking the Silence

Assassin
Breaking the Silence