One of the thrash metal’s Big 4, New York’s Anthrax are celebrating their 40th anniversary this year. being formed in Queens in 1981. What better way to celebrate it than with brand new full length album? This one contains eleven songs with opener Persistence Of Memory being an instrumental intro to the songs on this album. Besides groove and thrash metal guitar work this album contains lots of melody and catchy guitar hooks topped with Joey Belladonna’s great vocal lines who sounds more convincing than ever. Charlie Benante is one of best metal drummers out there and listen to this record and it will show you this fact. Also, guitar solos on this one are just perfect. The Long Goodbye is one of my personal highlights of the album containing both superb almost melancholic melody and great guitar riffs and solo. There are of course some faster songs like great It’s For The Kids which was smartly chosen as a single from the album. The second longest song besides fantastic almost seven minutes long The Edge Of Perfection on this album is just above six minutes long title song which I must also emphasize as being one of my favorites on this album. Also, NYC 93 and My Victory did move and shake my sorry ass around the room while listening. But, Anthrax released a good album for their anniversary, it is not definitely in my top three of their albums, but it is in top five or six. Thrash metal forever!
Drop Dead, Gorgeous are hailing from Denver, USA and this is their latest e.p. containing six songs. I must admit I have never heard of this band until this release and now I am happy I dug it up from the underground. It is hard to describe the music of this band, but I will try. In the song called Cyanide they mix melody of pop punk, electronica, some post punk and post hardcore along with harsh hardcore breakdowns. I am usually fan of electronica use if it is used wisely which is the case here. The vocals are mostly nice melodic with great vocal lines, but they also melt to hardcore screams here and there. Most of the songs is up tempo with some smartly done tempo changes to refresh the song itself. Lyrics are personal and dealing with how to cope with a loss, fighting your inner demons, hope and despair, I love it! I really enjoyed listening to this one, it is quite refreshing and I would like to listen and watch this live once. My personal favorite is Six Feet, also Feels Like Forever, but I love the e.p. as a whole! I recommend this one.
Although they broke up, NOFX released a documentary movie about their 40 year old career, which I unfortunately didn’t see yet. But, here is the soundtrack to the movie containing double cd treat. On the first one are 15 songs, containing trusted hits like Drugs Are Good, Separation Of Church And Skate, We Called It America, live rendition of Linoleum, but there are also some rarities like cover of La Bamba, On The Road recorded in Omaha in 1986, demo version of Secret Society, acoustic version of Punk Rock Cliche and in the end real treat, live versions of Nofx and the last new song the guys ever played live We Did It Our Way which always make goosebumps upon my skin while listening. This is what the first cd is. Second cd contains original movie music score written by Fat Mike himself. It is nice to see he tried himself in this one and succeeded proving how diverse and talented musician he is. This is a treat for all NOFX fans, and nice gift to cheer me up until I see the movie which I hope to catch somewhere.
