review: Homicide (Canada) -- old-school thrash

Homicide

Left For Dead

21 August 2020

Life is beautiful, peaceful and the governments of the world lead the nations through love, understanding and harmony as humanity heads toward an infinite future of glory and progress, but not on Earth 2020 as attested by the Canadian thrash band Homicide. Earth 1995 was not much better, either. That’s when the band released its debut album Malice and Forethought. According to Homicide, life on this planet is best described by bitter, resentful, angry, antisocial and criminal lyrics. Apparently, science says that people mellow with age, supposedly becoming more positive and stable. Did that news not make it to this band? These thrashers are angrier than a Canadian hockey team, and Canadian hockey players are certifiable psychopaths that “play” hockey as an excuse to engage in violent acts of legalized assault and battery.

The music is no-nonsense, uptempo, chunky thrash grooving, and big beats on the drums, for an old-fashioned style of aggressive energy. The vocals are not singing but more like testimonies of anger at the government, religion, and everything else. There is a bit of melody in the guitar solos, but other than that, forget it, it’s thrash. The song “Enemy of the State” begins slow, but that does not last long. Hopefully, nobody was waiting for a ballad because that’s not happening. The album is 30 or so minutes of old-school thrash. Bay Area-style thrash is probably a pretty good description. By the way, Metal Archives seems to say that this album was already released in 2019 with a different song sequence. Anyway, this meat-and-potatoes thrash album should please especially the fans that prefer the sounds of the old school in a simple and loud way.

Left For Dead by Homicide