Swedish thrash quartet Morbid Breath have released a couple of singles to date, with both tracks finding their way on to the band’s debut EP, In The Hand of the Reaper. Whilst they are only young chaps, their sound is so rooted in the early eighties you’d be forgiven for wracking your brains thinking you’d heard them before on an old Speed Kills compilation if you’re of the right age to remember such a thing…

Hellbringer – one of those singles I mentioned, is a delicious mix of pre-Def Jam Slayer and Canada’s Razor, although the slightly airless production means the track is robbed of some of it’s vitality thanks to a slightly squelchy rhythm guitar tone. But the bones of a titanic thrasher are there, as they also are on Ancient Beasts which adds a raw-throated, more Teutonic edge to proceedings thanks to bassist/vocalist Marcus Eriksson.

David Gustaffson‘s cymbal work on this track shows the band are willing to go the extra mile in terms of attaining a real authenticity to their retro sound – it’s pure Lombardo – and it’s nice to hear a young band eschewing anything modern in favour of retaining the elements of what made thrash metal so compelling a proposition to heavy metal fans in the first place.

Best track Beneath The Graves adds a doomier, almost proto-death metal element to the the mix, and it’s here that the band come across as a truly promising new talent. They build the intensity of the song beautifully through it’s early stages before letting rip at the end in a style so convincing you won’t be able to resist a little bit of cavorting around the living room, which has to be a bonus in these relentlessly locked down times – just make sure you’ve stowed away any breakables before putting the record on…

Good stuff, all up, and, though the appeal of the band’s retro-thrash standpoint is necessarily limited, it’s hard to find those it does appeal to finding much fault in it at all.

In The Hand of the Reaper releases on May 21st.