Chinchilla
Take No Prisoner

With this artwork and this unknown moniker, the Chinchilla offer us some power metal.

But like other bands such as Symphorce, Brainstorm, Rage, they come from Germany, and their music deviates from melodic and danceable lines, offering us instead a kind of unrestrained, powerful, and fast Heavy Metal, technically very valid and why not... peculiar.

The character of "peculiarity" is essentially given by three factors; first of all their name: for the type of music, they could have easily been called "Nuclear Massacre" or "Destrucion Human," but instead, they are the Chinchilla, like that silly breed of Persian cats, or like those tiny, trembling, sleepy hamsters.
Again, their artwork; being categorized as "Power Metal" they could have drawn some sword and a king with a scepter on a mountain, but no, because the entire bootleg is dedicated to the New York gangster period. Finally, their music: no keyboard notes and particularly amplified 80s Heavy Metal in compositional power, decidedly aggressive in delivering riffs and solos, a genre that takes a second name: Heavy Speed.

Sixth album released to precede the tour supporting Saxon; "Take No Prisoner" has an immediate impact on the listener, and doesn't waste a moment in expressing the rocky and sharp style of these ten tracks. It's destructive heavy metal, unrestrained, aggressive, already in the opening song, The Almighty Power, where it's easy to recognize a charged and hoarse voice typical of a hard rocker. "Death Is the Grand Leveller" has a galloping drum background, but the guitars contrast the speed by going slower and creating cadenced and atmospheric chords, with excellent melancholic solos at the end, and accelerated parts.
Obviously, as tradition wants, the musical ferocity must compose melody as well, it's also the case with "The Call" very fast and composed of the alternation of melodic and flowing parts with others of instrumental technique, with particular attention to the bass. More classical in nature is "The Ripper" with its overwhelming and powerful rhythm, with very dynamic singing, while the title track "Take no prisoner" is particularly heavy and massive, harsh and violent.

Here then is presented the power metal that doesn't "auto-disgrace" itself from the start, useful to those who have grown tired of the genre; the fast and warrior rhythms remain as in the case of "Lost Control" but all references to the catchy song disappear. A certain darkness is accentuated, and contexts that hint at thrash are introduced, as is the example of "Money Talks" with fantastic shapeless solos. The project is therefore cute and appreciable, taken by itself, but to evaluate the final product, one would have to analyze song by song, and PERHAPS we will realize that technically they are not placed (hierarchically) above the more famous and habitual bands in the metal field.

What matters is that the album is not conformist to the canons of the more popular currents within the metal extension, even if at certain moments, a slight anchoring towards classicism is accentuated also a little bit.