MERENDINE ATOMICHE – Rude Rebel Brotherhood

The Italian Merendine Atomiche, or in English… “Atomic Snacks”, are showing their worth again with a new release for 2009.

After taking a trip through their past years, without a doubt, the “Atomics” have gone through some changes and they surely crossed a few bridges in their 14 year career.

In their earlier years, they played Old School Thrash / Speed Metal with touches of early 90s era Pantera. Their albums (The Holy Metal and Walk Across Fire) contained gruesome speeds, smashing vocals and unmerciful guitars.
In 2006, something changed in the band’s attitude towards their Metal and for Thrash Metal in particular. The crunchy sound became more mellow and gloomy, the tempo had slowed down and in general, the music became Modern. Thrash Metal in their music is just an addition. Their Metal, since their second album Raw, although handled with care with great production work by the studio team which consisted of the famous Savatage and Trans-Siberian orchestra guitarist Chris Caffery, has changed its face into Heavy Metal with Southern touches and bits of Thrash Metal elements. Some will say that with progress some things have to be left behind. On a personal note – it does not have to be like that at all.

Rude Rebel Brotherhood is the continuance of Raw, with the same high-class quality of recording. You can truly see the hand of Chris Caffery in this release. The general sound is amazing, strong and it has similarities to the sound production in Caffery’s later material. The difference is that Caffery’s music is different from the Atomics, who display a mixture of sub-genres with various elements of Southern Hard Rock music. The funny thing is that these guys actually released a tribute album for Metallica back in 1999. Well, those days are gone and you can notice the sounds of early Mötley Crüe’s crude melodic riffs and even a Saxophone playing near the end of the last track.

Overall, like in parts of Raw, the music turned from Speed mayhem to more solid based mid-tempo style with shifts between mid to slow tempo, although there are tracks like “Burnt” which still possess the double bass assault albeit for a short period.

The positive part for you speed lovers out there, is that the heaviness of the album makes up for the lack of Speed Metal sections, like the band’s early days. In addition, the power of these riffs are due to good sound engineering and let’s not forget the great tune writing by the Italian Pizza bashers. The riffs played are groovy as hell with darker edges in most of the songs. Other songs in this release are Hard Rockin’ with a Texan attitude also provided with reverbed acoustics. The solos presented here are varied but they are not the kind to mosh you like a Thrash Metal frenzy person but they are rather lead guitar breaks with enchanted melody and wah-wah runabouts with high technical performance.

The vocalist and founding member, Zanda, makes you think, how diverse can you be? He just has it all, except from a high-pitched voice, this guy is talented as hell. His voice playing ability makes him sound like Tim Owen’s bombastic low voice, a polished Metalcore singer with screaming and low growls, Phil Anselmo in Pantera’s later stages and a Texan clean Hard Rock singer. You can clearly see that this man has almost everything in regards to his vocal style.

Here are the songs from Rude Rebel Brotherhood that should listen to until you drop: “Hope”, a Modern Heavy Metal track with cool pace shifts, great Hard Rockin’ wah-wah solos, angry vocals yet with an amazing clean chorus. “Rude Rebel Brotherhood”, just like the previous one but with a stronger groovy approach. Near the end of the track, mayhem is unleashed with bites of heavy riffs – the pace slows down and the band just divides the slow pace into seven parts of destruction. Each time it just gets better – “Rude Rebel Brotherhooooooooooood”. “Captain Venice”, a speed track, in comparison to others has that New School Thrash Metal sound in it, but not too much. “Summer Meal” is when the Hard Rock party enters with style but there are some heavy riffs out here of Modern Metal bash. “No, I Can’t” is a great track that gives you a weird idea that someone forgot to turn off the metronome before recording the rest of the instruments. The track is another Modern Heavy Metal effort with great vocals of pure excellence.

Under their new label, Locomotive Records, the Atomics made a great release. Although they left the Old School behind, their music still pumps blood and can make even the Old School guy, bang his head.