STEELGAR – Xenocide

The army of goats has arrived to conquer the world. Its name is Steelgar and it is Spanish in origin. Somebody over there must like or was influenced a lot by the story of Frank Herbert’s Dune to call this pack of Thrashers by this name. Leave no room for error, there will be a Xenocide after their attack run.

Overall, Steelgar is an 80’s oriented band playing Thrash Metal in the likes of the Bay Area style mixed with some Euro Thrash installments along with Traditional outputs. In addition, this is an old school band making it simple for you to understand their music and their views. Whether it’s hailing Thrash like on “Thrashing Knights” or contributing a tribute to the Dune novel with “Riders Of The Sand”, it’s all right there before your eyes (or ears for that matter), no mysteries lying here.

The music form itself lies in the boundaries of the traditional style and production of late 80’s Thrash. The riff passages and solo mischief presented will not show any progression or complexity, just straight to the face music with no bullshit. As for the sound production and scale choices, Steelgar did not buck for the D-tuned guitar trends that almost every Thrash band goes for today, they wanted to be classic, so classic they remained with a regular tune-up.

Materially, Xenocide might relish some memories of past Thrash Metal albums, nevertheless, with its undying speed and power, it is no relic. For true Thrashers this will be a very nice trip and it has its share of moshers as “Injected”, “Napalm Burn”, “Hunter On Prowl”, “Riders Of The Sand” and “Thrashing Knights”. However, the others are no home runs, even the ones presented as their best works, could have been mind blowers for sure with a little more effort.

It seems that Steelgar took the safest way of making old school Thrash without trying to take some risk and maybe turn on something new. It is true that the old school will always have something to offer, yet, it does not always have to be on the same formula.

Xenocide came from a band that has existed for four years. Their Metal vision is something that other bands in their genre should embrace. All that is left for Steelgar is to come up with a second album that will show the Metal world their true worth. Thrash on guys!