{"id":66158,"date":"2018-01-10T00:00:50","date_gmt":"2018-01-10T00:00:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/?p=66158"},"modified":"2018-02-15T11:54:07","modified_gmt":"2018-02-15T11:54:07","slug":"album-review-cruentator-aint-war-hell","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/album-review-cruentator-aint-war-hell\/","title":{"rendered":"CRUENTATOR – Ain\u2019t War Hell? (2018) | Album \/ EP Reviews @ Metal Forces Magazine"},"content":{"rendered":"

CRUENTATOR
Ain\u2019t War Hell?<\/strong><\/span>
\n\"\"
\nXtreem Music (2018)<\/span>
Rating: 7.5\/10<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

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Cruentator are a fairly new thrash metal band hailing from Como in Italy and this is their first outing. Eight tracks, 30-minutes of thrash… and that\u2019s about it.<\/p>\n

The combo are very much surfing on the waves of the \u201cnew wave of old school thrash\u201d that has been battering us for the last couple of decades. This is the sort of festering, frothing, and rabid high-tempo velocity we\u2019ve come to expect from a whole host of bands that are intent on marrying together the Teutonic forces of, say, Destruction<\/a>, with the flailing of Slayer<\/a>, while still hinting at the newer breed of aggression with those streaks of, say, Warbringer.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s fast, pounding, aggressive no frills belligerence built upon a thundering percussive performance of Riccardo, who rarely stops for breath from opener \u2018Merciless Extermination\u2019 to closer \u2018Cluster Terror\u2019. His wild yet well-executed patterns of pace perfectly compliment the driving, well-oiled bass trundles of Vanni, whose turbulent fits worm their way through the frantic, smouldering piles of Omar\u2019s ripping guitar.<\/p>\n

Raw, primal rage is the order of the day here as the band is led through the debris-strewn jungles by squawking frontman Ambro, who spends half-an-hour spitting, coughing, and vomiting up shards of metal and clumps of dust, as in non-poetic fashion he spins rugged tales of napalm bombardment, incendiary devices, poisoned air, acid rain, global pandemic, and unleashing the impetuous mastiffs of war. It\u2019s blistering chaos from an Italian troop who sounds as if they\u2019ve emerged from the trenches with only death on their minds.<\/p>\n

Ain\u2019t War Hell?<\/em> Is simply one of those well-armoured tanks which bulldozes its way into the ears, mashes the brain, gouges out the eyes and leaves the skull splintered. It\u2019s an unnerving display of a thrash holocaust delivered with barbaric intensity and rarely veering from its destructive path.<\/p>\n

\u2018Tyrants Of The Wasteland\u2019, \u2018Barbaric Violence\u2019, \u2018Evil Is Prowling Around\u2019 and \u2018Marching Into A Minefield\u2019 couldn\u2019t be more self-explanatory. But look beyond those titles, and become engulfed within the fires of a sizzling, sordid thrash effort of raging riffs, percussive crushing and vocal angst. It\u2019s not original, and it\u2019s not overly intelligent, give or take the usual thrash panoramas whereby a slower segment of menace is introduced and a fiery solo emerges from the smog and spirals like a flare. However, there\u2019s no hiding from the overall angriness of this grizzly, war-torn expression in which a bunch of what I assume are friends have gathered together to create a record whose only aim is to annihilate all senses.<\/p>\n

Ain\u2019t War Hell?<\/em> is straight up thrash metal of limited design. But who cares when you\u2019ve been hit by another wave of bludgeoning riffage and that fatal drum avalanche. \u201cDetonation, conflagration, infiltration, devastation!\u201d<\/em> screams Ambro on \u2018Marching Into A Minefield\u2019, and that just about sums up this unrelenting, stubborn and above all violent slab.<\/p>\n

But as \u2018Cluster Terror\u2019 brings the album to a close, I can only leave you with the last line of this tour de force. \u201cAnd there’s no way to avoid your death\u201d<\/em> yelps Ambro, as Cruentator once again comes together to riddle the body with gunfire so remorseless that when the war is over the sky is still raining bullets.<\/p>\n

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

CRUENTATORAin\u2019t War Hell? Xtreem Music (2018)Rating: 7.5\/10 Cruentator are a fairly new thrash metal band hailing from Como in Italy and this is their first outing. Eight tracks, 30-minutes of thrash… and that\u2019s about it. The combo are very much surfing on the waves of the \u201cnew wave of old school thrash\u201d that has been […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[24,3836],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-66158","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-album-ep-reviews","category-cruentator"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66158","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=66158"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66158\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":66160,"href":"https:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66158\/revisions\/66160"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=66158"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=66158"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=66158"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}