Terror Empire
Face the Terror

Someone is watching, is it big brother? Judging by the bandname and the title though I would be led to believe that it is the USA that is watching, the nation where everyone lives in terror and the states wants to watch its citizens more and more for each passing moments, after all anyone can be a terrorist and he who has nothing to hide has nothing to fear from being watched all the time, right? This kind of ideas is what this album revolves around, how the governments and security agencies showed their ugly Orwellian faces after the 9/11 attacks. Although the band wants to thrash away rather than anything else so I suppose that we cannot really expect much in terms of storytelling as thrash metal is often more looking to be aggressive than telling stories.

So, we have established that the band wants to thrash and they do it well if your definition of thrashing is to be playing thrash metal. It is remnant of the classical style of the eighties with a slightly modern touch and a production that sounds newer than being from that era, not much but a little bit. The production is quite raw and the sound is rather aggressive and powerful, the album is short and to the point as well with a playing time of just under 28 minutes. Some have called it an EP which neither the band nor I agree with as an EP is not this long, but no matter what you call it you can describe it as thrash metal plain and simple.

I was not expecting a lot from this album but I would say that it is definitely better than I expected and it is a good album, short and to the point with no real shortcomings. For anyone who is into the thrash metal genre it is probably amazing, at least some reviews are pointing in that direction. Although if you are just vaguely interested in thrash metal I don’t really think this will appeal that much to you considering that there is already a lot of thrash metal like this and plenty of it is better, sure plenty is worse as well but that isn’t a guarantee for success that you are better than some. The fact is that no matter which way you look at it, this album is good but it is at the same time nothing world changing or musically groundbreaking so it will probably only appeal to those already into the genre.

But you don’t really have to take my word for it as this album is downloadable for free from the band’s homepage or at least linked from there, so you can judge for yourselves if I am correct or not which I think I am. I would say that as a debut this is one very interesting Facing of Terror, an album well worth getting to know if you are into the thrash metal genre. So, one to look into for all you who are into the thrashy side of metal, a positive surprise I might add.