There are times, quite a lot of times actually, when only the old school will do. And whilst you could make a case for the fact that the new breed of thrash metal bands are bringing fresh perspectives and modern energy to the once-thought-finished genre, there’s nothing quite like an album (or EP, in the case of Canadian thrashers Aggression) which opens with what can only be decribed as a ‘Slayeresque riff’…

Aggression have been extant, on and off, since thrash’s glory days of the mid eighties, and they bring that life experience to bear on this titillating new little six tracker; these men know their way around a thrash riff; the fact that many of them are ones you’ll have heard variations of before is neither here nor there. Once opening track Poisonous Potion kicks off – and kicks off is a phrase I’ve selected carefully there – all worries of the ‘heard it all before’ kind are vaporised in a mass of thrashing limbs and throbbing neck discs.

Satanic Angel Holy Devil is even more intense, the churning riffage undepinning Denis ‘Sasquatch’ Barthe‘s demented barking to a tee. Barthe is responsible for some of that riffage, alongside guitar partner Dave ‘Watts’ Watson but musically this isn’t a unit that invites the spotlighting of individual performance. Actually the lightning-fast bass intro on Possessed By Dawn supplied by four stringer Kyle ‘Viking’ Hagen is worthy of note, but what I’m trying to say is that these three blokes, alongside drummer Ryan ‘Quatchi’ Idris are all about meshing their individual sounds in to a thunderous whole rather than going of on ego-massaging tangents for the sake of it. And this strategy works mighty well…

This is hugely enjoyable stuff, in the way that slipping in to your comfortable old Suicidal Tendencies track pants is at the end of a hard day working from your home office. It demands nothing of the listener, but gives a whole lot baCK in terms of musical smarts and simple, old-fashioned commitment to the cause. Great stuff!

Field of Nightmares releases on October 26th.