{"id":101819,"date":"2023-11-13T00:00:14","date_gmt":"2023-11-13T00:00:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/?p=101819"},"modified":"2023-11-14T15:21:33","modified_gmt":"2023-11-14T15:21:33","slug":"ep-review-hazardous-highly-contagious","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/ep-review-hazardous-highly-contagious\/","title":{"rendered":"HAZARDOUS &#8211; Highly Contagious (2023) | Album \/ EP Reviews @ Metal Forces Magazine"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span class=\"title2\"><strong>HAZARDOUS<br \/>Highly Contagious EP<\/strong><\/span><br \/>\n<img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/wp-content\/themes\/metalforces\/images\/spacer.gif\" border=\"0\" alt=\"\" height=\"3\" \/><br \/>\n<span class=\"title3\"><span style=\"color: #c80000;\">Self-released (2023)<\/span><br \/><strong>Rating: 4.5\/10<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n<div class=\"image floatedright\">\n<table width=\"100%\" align=\"center\" cellspacing=\"0\" cellpadding=\"0\" border=\"0\">\n<tr valign=\"top\">\n<td><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/wp-content\/themes\/metalforces\/images\/spacer.gif\" width=\"10\" border=\"0\"><\/td>\n<td>\n<div align=\"center\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/10\/hazardous_highlycontagiousep.jpg\" height=\"200\" width=\"200\" border=\"0\"><\/p>\n<table width=\"100%\" align=\"center\" cellspacing=\"0\" cellpadding=\"0\" border=\"0\">\n<tr valign=\"top\">\n<td>\n<div align=\"left\"><span class=\"smalltext\"><\/span><\/div>\n<\/td>\n<td>\n<div align=\"right\"><span class=\"smalltext\"><\/span><\/div>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n<\/div>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n<\/div>\n<p>Four tracks are delivered on the this debut outing from Istanbul, Turkey-based thrashers Hazardous. These guys formed four years ago and in that time they should have realised that the vocals are a major irritant. Persistent squawking squabbles litter this EP and they do far more harm than good. The biggest issue here is that those ear-scraping tones belong to founding member Hamit \u00d6zmen, so don\u2019t expect any changes.<\/p>\n<p>If you can somehow tolerate your skull being scraped then what you get is a mish mash of thrash n\u2019 hardcore. Riff-wise it\u2019s extremely contemporary, clinical and a tad mechanical as evidenced by the opening title track, but once those vocals hit it\u2019s game over\u2026 and not in a positive way.<\/p>\n<p>The track which suffers most is \u2018Long Live The New Flesh\u2019, which starts promisingly enough with the hard drums but the vocal tirades are pure cartoonish comedy. And so the theme continues with the band carving out reasonably catchy and sharp thrash metal severely let down by Donald Duck\u2019s aunt on vocals.<\/p>\n<p>Two more tracks come in the form of \u2018Fear The Old Blood\u2019 and \u2018Shapeshifter\u2019, the latter being my favourite due to its scything axe work. Put even a half decent singer on this EP and you\u2019ve got yourself a crunchy and zipping release, but all the while \u00d6zmen is speaking for the band Hazardous is a no go area.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Neil Arnold<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>HAZARDOUSHighly Contagious EP Self-released (2023)Rating: 4.5\/10 Four tracks are delivered on the this debut outing from Istanbul, Turkey-based thrashers Hazardous. These guys formed four years ago and in that time they should have realised that the vocals are a major irritant. Persistent squawking squabbles litter this EP and they do far more harm than good. [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[24,5514],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-101819","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-album-ep-reviews","category-hazardous"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101819","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=101819"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101819\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":101820,"href":"https:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101819\/revisions\/101820"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=101819"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=101819"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=101819"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}