{"id":23379,"date":"2015-01-12T00:00:28","date_gmt":"2015-01-12T00:00:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/?p=23379"},"modified":"2015-01-27T16:58:43","modified_gmt":"2015-01-27T16:58:43","slug":"album-review-shredhead-death-is-righteous","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/album-review-shredhead-death-is-righteous\/","title":{"rendered":"SHREDHEAD – Death Is Righteous (2015) | Album \/ EP Reviews @ Metal Forces Magazine"},"content":{"rendered":"

SHREDHEAD
Death is Righteous<\/strong><\/span>
\n\"\"
\nMighty Music (2015)<\/span>
Rating: 7\/10<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

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Death Is Righteous<\/em> is album number two from Israeli thrash merchants Shredhead, who are the sort of quartet it could be said have the perfect moniker to describe their pacey, bruising sound.<\/p>\n

Having formed in 2009 as The New Order, they changed their name to Shredhead in 2011 and in August of the same year released the debut full-length composition Human Nature<\/em>.<\/p>\n

I never laid ears upon the debut, so I was eager to hear what these guys were all about. In part I was expecting a rather tiresome thrash metal affair, although I\u2019m pleasantly surprised with this 11-track affair. I think, however, it\u2019s best to get the negatives out of the way first. My main issue is that although this is a frantic, belligerent affair it is a tad generic at times and sounds like the sort of masculine, confrontational noise one would have expected to have heard from Pantera in the mid-90s.<\/p>\n

Indeed, there is a lot of Pantera influence here, especially with some of the vocal melodies of Aharon Ragoza, and because I\u2019m not a big fan of Phil Anselmo and crew then it\u2019s no shock that at times I find this record to be a tad too bland and predictable. Having said that, the positives do outweigh the negatives in that through the bruising ferocity of this charging platter, Shredhead has the ability to write a number of infectious melodies. This becomes immediately apparent with the opening attack of \u2018Devils Race\u2019, which is as catchy as hell.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s very clear that Shredhead plays a pulverising style of groove metal built upon the churning guitar sound of Yotam Nagor, who for me is the real star of the thrash show here. Indeed, while so many bands of the mid-90s were looking for this sort of sound it\u2019s not a style that has travelled well into the current climate, and maybe that\u2019s why at times Death Is Righteous<\/em> is so bloody refreshing. Through the likes of \u2018LPBZ\u2019 and the choppier raps of \u2018The Lie\u2019 there is a truly confrontational flavour as Roee Kahana hammers his drums like an eight-armed pro-wrestler bashing the heads of his opponents.<\/p>\n

The album also offers up some extremely memorable mid-tempo moments too, and that\u2019s where the riffs really come to the fore. I just wish they came more often because a majority of the album is taken up by those faster, aggressive strains, as with \u2018Last Words Are Lost\u2019 and the blunt assault of \u2018Hallucinations\u2019.<\/p>\n

I do think it\u2019s fair to say that Shredhead could be accused of having too many songs which run a similar course and that further injections of subtlety wouldn\u2019t go amiss, but there\u2019s always been a huge audience for this type of no nonsense clinical metal. However, by the time I\u2019ve reached \u2018Walk With The Dead\u2019, I\u2019m appreciating the overall bruising quality but slightly drained by the overload of those generic vocal bellows and blunt riffs. \u2018Witness Hell\u2019 does have that cool mix of lower tempo grooviness, although it\u2019s all so bloody mid to late 90s in approach and for me, at that time, metal had become stale and all to streetwise. For attitude and downright antagonism though, Shredhead\u2019s sophomore slice is certainly one to break out in a sweat to.<\/p>\n

Neil Arnold<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

SHREDHEADDeath is Righteous Mighty Music (2015)Rating: 7\/10 Death Is Righteous is album number two from Israeli thrash merchants Shredhead, who are the sort of quartet it could be said have the perfect moniker to describe their pacey, bruising sound. Having formed in 2009 as The New Order, they changed their name to Shredhead in 2011 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[24,1609],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-23379","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-album-ep-reviews","category-shredhead"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23379","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=23379"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23379\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":23440,"href":"https:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23379\/revisions\/23440"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23379"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23379"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23379"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}