Ostensibly a half hour trot up and down the well-worn blackthrash highways and byways, Canada’s Chainbreaker have actually unleashed something of a metal onion; by which of course, something multi-layered and very pungent, capable of bringing weak souls to tears but bolstering the ferrous diet of anyone to whose taste the superb Lethal Desire is (that’s enough tenuous cookery analogies – Ed).

Atomica is just about a perfect opening track for this kinda tomfoolery; Opening with the noise of an atomic burst, the track itself bolts out of the traps at light speed, propelled by a a suitably hate-filled vocal from frontman Rob Ouellette. Second track Born Loud is just as good – actually no, it’s better – rattling along in an old sleeveless Voïvod shirt (first album, natch) and banging its head to some belting lead guitar from Ian Chains (who you may well know from his day job in Cauldron).

The band’s eponymous anthem is punkier, and therefore even more to this correspondent’s taste, coming on like a mayhemic cross between fellow Canucks Razor and Brit street punkers The Blood. A heady mix of names, for sure, but luckily Chainbreaker are more than good enough to stand up to the comparison. Three tracks in and I’m properly hooked…

However those first three tracks are probably the highlights if truth be told in terms of solid gold, surefire heads down dementitude, although later highlights like the title track, the amusingly-titled Constant Graving and the slightly more progressive Postmortem Dreams all come close. But at the end of the day, Chainbreaker aren’t really here to provide precision-tooled ear candy as much as they simply need to deliver on attitude, mayhem and downright fun. And where they are lacking in the former, they surely make up for things with an abundance of the latter.

Required listening if you’re a fan of this kind of thing, yes – but even if you’re not you’ll get a lot out of enjoyment from Lethal Desire, so why not give it a go?

Lethal Desire is out on February 15th.