VICIOUS – Vile, Vicious & Victorious

Forming in 1999, the Swedish Thrash/Death Metal band Vicious has released its debut full-length album called Vile, Vicious & Victorious under the Sound Riot Records label. The album contains 9 tracks, elapsing all of 35 minutes, filled with unadulterated, brutal Metal Power. Pontus Pettersson on guitar, along with Fredrik Eriksson on drums, founded the band, and over time added Simon Jarrolf to round out the guitar presence, Captain Carcass (great Death Metal name, by the way) on bass guitar, and Henrik Wenngren (Skyfire) on vocals.

WHAT’S GOOD

The production quality is excellent (with the sole exception of the snare drum, which lacks the snap and punch demonstrated by the other instruments). The double-bass drum work can cause a cerebral hemorrhage if played loud enough, and the guitars (both conventional and bass) come through with a very “live” and crisp feel to them. Each track has a very similar sound and pattern, but the power and thump to each song definitely serves the purpose of building up energy in its listeners and cleansing the adrenaline glands. Wenngren does a good job too with his Cookie Monster vocal style … the production mix has his voice at a volume level slightly below the instruments, which is the way to go when a band produces music as powerful as this – focusing on the musical strength of the band, in the end, most definitely makes the band’s music appear that much stronger. Too many bands, unfortunately, miss this obvious point these days.

WHAT’S LESS THAN GOOD

At 35 minutes, this album seems to barely eclipse the length of many EPs released in recent times. Although Wenngren’s voice is tolerable and subdued from a volume perspective, Vicious would have been better off to include more extended musical passages to even further highlight the strength of the band’s sound and musical aptitude. Overall, each of the 9 tracks could have been made longer to include more stand-alone music! Lastly, more bass drumbeat variations could have been implemented – Eriksson appears to be a solid drummer, but the basic beats throughout most songs are noticeably analogous.

FINAL THOUGHTS

It’s great to hear Metal with Thrash roots played with such great production! When Thrash was first introduced in the 1980’s, it essentially was the bastard stepchild of conventional Metal, and seldom (if ever) benefited from production advancements available at the time. As a result, Thrash was better heard live than on recordings, and was really hard to listen to unless you were an avid fan of the music style. Bands like Vicious bridge that gap and have more “Global Metal Appeal” due to their great recording sound – it simply does justice to this sub-genre of Metal. If anything, even tepid fans of Thrash or Death Metal will certainly enjoy the power exuded from this band’s instruments and amplifiers!