Japanese thrashers Satsuriku Robot throw the absolute kitchen sink at their new EP/Album, No Thrash Metal No Life. Despite adopting a vocal approach at times that sounds – I’m looking back over the notes I made the first time I had a listen – ‘like an in-farrow sow being eviscerated’, they actually display a melodic sensibility on half the tracks here that would be the envy of many a more respected name…

The first half of the record – Side A, for all I know, as I’m just dealing with individual MP3s which I was given to review – is chaotic; You might imagine Mike Patton listening to it with a crazed grin on his face as Ken wrenches absolute mayhem from his vocal chords. What I’m now calling Side B is more considered, more melodic, more traditional for sure, but the whole shebang is surprisingly compelling. The title track is a masterpiece, a thrash metal symphony over and done in less than four minutes but containing an album’s worth of ideas. Within the very tight perameters they’ve create for themselves, I can’t actually think of anyone doing this stuff better right now.

Robot In The Pandemic is delightfully weird – and I’m sure the nuance is lost in the translation from Japanese thought to Western musical medium. Easier to understand is Carry On, which at a stretch you might imagine Loudness playing before they lost the prog elements from their sound. The thing is all of the seven tracks featured here, which veer from straight up Avant garde madness, through grind and thrash to relatively straightforward metal, contain something of interest, something to keep you coming back beyond just a cursory listen. I can’t quite put my finger on it yet, but this Robot has a definite X-Factor. I’m off for another listen to figure out what it is…

No Thrash Metal, No Life! is out now.