DREADNOUGHT - Demon

Dreadnought - Demon

7 songs
32:07 minutes
***** ***
(self released)

Bandpage

Not so many years ago, Luxembourg was all of a sudden swamped by a flood of trendy metalcore bands, and while many of those knew their trade, I still felt somewhat alienated from the music that I originally came to love as metal. But lately the tide is turning once again, with many old school metal bands surfacing with surprisingly great records. Scarlet Anger may be the most popular of this new breed of thrash metal bands, but there are many more lurking in the underground.

A few weeks ago I had the pleasure to review a demo by Kraton, and today is the turn of their rehearsal space mates Dreadnought. Their first album is titled Demon and offers a good half hour of black and thrash metal. The short length may be a little disappointing, but then the band makes sure that there is no room for any unnecessary tedium. The opener Pastor, with its venomous lyrics about the evils of all organised religious faiths, starts with acoustic guitar before surprising with quite an unusual three-quarter time rhythm. The following Revenge is a short and furious thrasher that doesn’t even take up three minutes, before my personal highlight Unbreakable offers some incredible blackened thrash metal that sounds like a dirtier Dissection. Hänk dech op is one of the few metal songs in Luxembourgish language that I have come across. Drinking You All Down may sound like the English spoken by non-English speakers, and somehow borrows heavily Randy Rhoads’ guitar riff from Crazy Train, but otherwise shows Dreadnought from their lighter and more party oriented side! Metalheads love their beer, and that’s a fact! Then there is only one more vocal track (Eternity) before the albums concludes with the nearly nine minute long instrumental title track which has some of the appealing trademarks that Metallica used to have on their long instrumentals ways back in the Eighties. This is a weird way to exit, considering that Dreadnought’s major strength are the totally incredible vocals by Bördi. He spews, and screams, and croaks with an unparalleled anguish!

This doesn’t lessen though the efforts of his band mates who also all do a great job on their instruments. Granted, the production is sometimes a little strange on the drums and the bass guitar, but the overall very old school sound still comes across very refreshing and is much more enjoyable than the majority of more polished recordings.

Demon is a great introduction by this new band whose members don’t look that young anymore. For now I am willing to give them eight points, which they have absolutely earned themselves. There are no weak moments anywhere on the record, but frankly I could have stomached these guys for at least a couple tracks more. Let’s hope that Dreadnought will continue to create such great black thrash metal for a long time to come!

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