3000AD „The Void”

Total Metal Records & Metal Scrap Records, 2020

Music: Crossover / Thrash Metal
Website:
https://www.facebook.com/3000AD.BAND
https://3000ad.bandcamp.com/
https://metalscraprecords.bandcamp.com/album/3000ad-the-void
Duration: 42:36 minutes (8 tracks)
Country: New Zeland

All three members of this New Zealand band played in SOUNDS OF VENGEANCE and either renamed themself to 3000AD or simply formed another separate band. “The Void” is the band’s debut full-length studio album.

The album was recorded in the USA and New Zealand. The mastering was done at the cult Sterling Sound in New York. The whole was mixed by Clint Murphy. The graphics for the album were painted by Eliran Kantor, known for his works for, among others, ATHEIST, GWAR, HATEBREED, ICED EARTH, MASTER, MEKONG DELTA, SATAN, SIGH, TESTAMENT.

The musicians are clearly inspired by crossover playing from the 80s and 90s, which combined punk-rock simplicity and rebelliousness, hardcore aggression and melody with thrash-metal heaviness and a more sophisticated approach to the arrangement.

The songs, almost classically, move around core-metal themes, presenting very energetic music, full of aggression and spontaneity as well as strong hits enriched with a specific simple melody giving a pinch of darkness.

The guitars bring out dynamic, catchy riffs, full of fast and strong licks, as well as slowdowns and short climatic solos. Of course, it was not without clearly marked bass guitar accents. The rest of the rhythm section (drums) is as it should be, but without too rich rhythm.

The vocal layer does not differ from the canons of such playing. There is a screaming-declaiming lead vocal, which is the drummer here, and who even singing in places. His pitch is usually quite high, but not without more aggressive screams. And the compaction of these vocals was taken care of by the rest of the musicians, creating choirs and various vocal-lyrical accents that enrich the vocalism of the whole in an interesting way.

The music smoothly oscillates between thrash-metal and hardcore themes.

In fact (with one exception – the track), the musicians take handfuls for arrangement solutions that we know well from their predecessors in this genre, such as. S.O.D. / M.O.D., D.R.I., early METALLICA, or ANTHRAX and many others…

There also is the last, instrumental track “Born Under a Black Sun” that differs significantly from the general crossover climate, serving more heavy-metal melodies, with similarities to instrumental motifs straight from METALLICA.

The whole thing is good and pleasant to listenening.