UK thrashers Solitary are back and, it has to be said, in top form on new album Embrace The Darkness!

I was much taken by their last outing, 2020’s The Truth Behind The Lies, and there’s nothing on this new album that in any way tarnishes those happy memories; Quite the opposite in fact. Solitary take those bowel-bothering foundations and build on them mightily on Embrace The Darkness. Anyone who has the balls to include a version of The Exploited‘s timeless classic Beat The Bastards, safe in the knowledge that it will in no way overshadow their own work, has to have something pretty good going for them, and on ripper tracks like Section 21 they prove just that.

In fact, there are many moments on ETD that prove that this is a band that can go toe to toe with just about any of the accepted ‘greats’ of trad thrash still doing the rounds in 2024; Their default setting – Onslaught meets Testament with a big dash o’Slayer – sets some formidably high bars, but it’s a standard the band meets on every track here.

Of course, that means there isn’t a whole lot here to get excited about if you’re into the proggier side of thrash – only opening track Embrace The Darkness offers even a scent of modernity – but it’s hard to resist a band that can unleash a thrasher as perfect as Settle Scores The Old Way or chug it’s way though a brute like Virtues. This is pure air-guitar-inducing madness and all the better for it!

And then there’s The Disappeared, an almost-perfect belch of heads-down mayhem that gets more done in it’s one hundred and twenty eight second duration than many bands manage in an entire album; This might be old school, but it’s state of the art too if truth be told, and it’s the sound of a band that’s managed to distil it’s own essence into two minutes of absolute mayhem. And that’s genius.

Great stuff, then, and an absolutely essential listen if you consider yourself as a thrash metal aficionado…

Embrace The Darkness releases on September 6th.