The industry-standard ‘cinematic’ album intro doesn’t bode well as far as any hopes for originality are concerned; but, once Indian thrashers Bloodkill let the thunder roll on ‘proper’ opener Blindead Circus, you’re confronted with a very different – and very vibrant – beast indeed.

Bloodkill mix up elements of thrash and death very nicely indeed, coming across as a sort of English Dogs-meets- Kreator hybrid that really gets the juices pumping very quickly indeed. This is fully-formed, brilliantly realised world class heavy metal. Anirudh Gollapudi stays just on the right side of ‘deranged’ vocally to keep things relatively accessible, but the real revelation here is the lead playing of Shubham Khare; I’m not really someone who listens out overmuch for what the lead guitarist is up to usually, but time and again across the album his playing actually made me sit and listen to what he was doing – that’s a major feat so props to him!

False Face is a great track that adds a bit of traditional metal to the mix with it’s classic riffs underpinned by some really solid drumming from Jay Patil, and one of the things you notice on this track is just how good the album sounds for a self produced effort – producer Keshav Dhar has pulled out all the stops to turn this into a fantastic-sounding album.

Unite and Conquer is a track that’s sure to appeal to most Sentinel Daily readers, again uniting some classic metal riffage to Gollapudi’s hoarse-throated roar, but seriously it’s unlikely that anything here won’t appeal; Bloodkill have identified their theatre of operations and, within those perameters they achieve big success time and again. Were they accorded the promotional push afforded by one of the big metal labels it’s hard to see them not becoming a name of world reknown – when that happens tell everyone where you heard about them first!

Throne of Control releases on January 19th.