Just because you play thrash doesn’t necessarily mean that you ‘get’ thrash; context is an important thing, and while the trend for retro-thrash is going full throttle, with many of its purveyors gorging on endless variations of the apocalypse/ nuclear war/ total annihilation themes, without the constant gnawing of three-minute warnings, duck and cover practices and psychologically horrifying public information films it loses something – “you weren’t there man; you don’t understand”.
Except Texans Warbeast were there, man – Destroy may only be their second release (excluding a split EP with Down’s Phil Anselmo, who mans the production desk here) but the quintet all served long sentences in the 80s thrash scene (you may know vocalist Bruce Corbitt from his time fronting Rigor Mortis) and they brutally harness that paranoid terror that marks so much of 80s thrash.
The creeping stomp of opener Cryogenic Thawout is like Rigor Mortis on downers, while the patriotic ode to 9⁄11, The Day Of…, lurches from neck-snapping, fret-wanking velocity to dark, headbanging grooves.
