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CHEMICIDE “Violence Prevails”
CHEMICIDE “Violence Prevails”
By Dr. Abner Mality
From the South comes the storm. When South American bands try their hand at the more extreme forms of metal, they just seem more intense and to the bone than most of their First World cousins. CHEMICIDE hail from the somewhat more unusual location of Costa Rica, but they keep the rawness that bands from Brazil and Chile possess.
With a name like CHEMICIDE, you might guess that they are a thrash band and you would be 100% correct. They play it like they mean it, not like they just wanna sound cool. You can’t get much better than the first track “Do As I Say, Not as I Do”, which starts with a great chugging grind before blowing up into a sonic holocaust of high speed thrash. This one reminded me a lot of “Schizophrenia/Beneath The Remains” era SEPULTURA. While this is the best track on the album, CHEMICIDE don’t really let up from there, they keep things jumping.
“Red Giant” hits with an EXODUS/SLAYER kind of bite while “Systemic Decay” has a more dissonant grind that leans more to the groovy, modern side of thrash. Frankie’s vocals are high pitched and angry, with no trace of death metal growling or clean vocals. The drums and bass really boom...great production here! “Parasite” is more like mid-period SEPULTURA while the title track is just saw-toothed primitive aggression. The speed the band whips up on “Supremacy” is mind-blowing, like “Pleasure to Kill” KREATOR while the brief “That’s Right, We’re That Spic Band” is an irreverent burst of punky crossover.
If you get the CD, you get two cover tracks. Incredibly, they do one of METALLICA’ most recent songs, “72 Seasons” but boy, they really thrash it up and make it dirty. You don’t realize how clean and smooth the original is until you hear this version. Then they wrap things up with DISCHARGE’ “Hear Nothing, See Nothing, Say Nothing”.
Like most South and Central American bands, CHEMICIDE is 0% original but more than make up for it with a musical flamethrower of pure thrash!
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