Not bad at all. This is promising thrash metal from Canada with a good mix of tempos and an overall vibe that draws heavily on late-80's/early-90's thrash. Expect lots of moderately fast picking patterns and somewhat basic lead playing, midpaced power chord breaks, tons of palm-muting, a few passages of speedy crossover aesthetics (both musically and with the vocal patterns), etc. Some of the note-based riffing is a little choppy due to the guitar tone and pops out too much as a result, but for the most part the songwriting is dead on. I really dig the vocals, too. They need a little work to come off as totally convincing, but the style is basically shouting/yelling just like old school thrash, and you almost never hear that style of singing these days it seems. The title track is much slower and more consistently paced, which can kind of drag on since it's one of the only songs that hits five minutes, but most of the compositions carry themselves well. "We'll Be Waiting" opens with some dual guitar work more along the lines of Iron Maiden or something (which bring to light minor performance flaws that could use touching up) and also has some cool melodic solos, breaking into one of the most blatant crossover thrash runs afterwards to add more energy; and "Bulletproof" has a two-minute intro with tons of tapping runs and stuff before breaking into another classic styled thrash break (the noisy solo really sucks though, breaking up an otherwise awesome song). "The Rise and Fall" is an instrumental that brings in some acoustic guitars to back the leads, which is actually really cool despite the first half of the song dragging a bit. I prefer the faster material to the rest of it, with the moderate breaks coming in a close second, whereas some of the slower riffs start to break apart and kill the energy of the material a little too much - the one exception being the awesome dual guitar panning rhythm in "Hit the Bricks", which would totally kick ass with a tighter recording. The recording's not so bad for a self-financed effort either, however. It's raw but definitely gets the job done. Sure, it sounds like a self-released EP, but the mix is pretty effective, and none of the tones are so rugged that it really hinders the listen. They need to turn up the bass and give the guitars more of a fluid crunch, and the drums are too taut, but they're certainly on the right track. The layout honestly blows though, with lightly blurred imagery and text and a general sense of disarray (a couple of songs are out of order on the tracklist, for example). No lyrics are included, just some band photos that make the members come off as more of a toughguy hardcore band, and some strange liner notes talking about how the band came together - which makes no sense since they've only been together for a year or two and are all quite young, so it's not like there's any significant history there at all - they're just kids doing a band, you know? From what I can make out the lyrics also seem to bear resemblances to classic thrash, dealing with violent fantasy kinds of subjects as well as war and that kind of thing. This is really fucking promising, though. I know I'm only giving it a 6/10 because it's a little crude around the edges, but with a little bit of a budget, a better layout, and the right label behind them this band could really do something with this stuff. I'd love to hear more, as I'm a diehard thrash fan and these songs come closer to that whole era than a lot of what I come across in modern times. Good work. Watch out for these guys... oh, and I'd fucking love to see Mandatory Death do a split with Municipal Waste!
[self-released]
Running time - 32:15, Tracks: 8
[Notable tracks: Going to War, Hit the Bricks]
Mandatory Death - http://www.mandatorydeath.com
