Boasting a three-pronged guitar lineup and apparently impeccable taste in music, Oakland-based sextet Doomsday would appear to have the World at their feet…
Depictions of Chaos, the band’s new six track EP, is as ripsnorting an exposition of the arts of crossover thrash as you could wish to hear, with the band whipping those triple axes into a frenzy against a backdrop of classic thrash/hardcore drumming from Marc Estabillo and some truly fearsome gang vocals come chorus time.
Best track here Agony Blossoms Fear is absolutely magnificent; chunky rhythm guitars chug their way giving no quarter, with Ryan Calaveras, Michael Chavez and Robert DeLorenzi combining to create a frashtastic wall of sound few operating in this area could hope to match. It’s a riot of violence of some proportion, make no mistake.
However although the band wear their influences proudly on their sleeves for all to hear, the respect they pay to the Gods of the genre is never wasted in bare-faced plagiary or pastiche. Soul Deprivation is finely-wrought thrash in it’s own right, bouncing out of the speakers in feral style, fuelled by the clanking, low slung bass of Glendon Diaz and driven by the impassioned vocal delivery of Carlos Velazquez. It’s familiar – comfortingly so at times – but it’s also downright energising and acutely relevant at the same time. These blokes know what they are doing, and what they are doing deserves to be heard.
Curiously, the shortest track here, Mask of Sanity, is also the most progressive, packing in a hell of a lot in less than two and a half minutes; Doomsday have set a hell of a standard for themselves with this all-too-short set, and I for one can’t wait to see what comes out of this band in the months and years to come. Grade-A thrash!
Depictions of Chaos is out now.
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