Destruction
Day Of Reckoning

At this point, he could return to his culinary vocation, when he managed the exquisite Barracuda pizzeria in Efringen-Kirchen.

Six albums in just under eleven years of ''thrash'' excavation are a significant achievement for Marcel ''Schmeir'' Schirner, bassist, vocalist, and mentor of the historic Teutonic band Destruction. But while the beginning of the millennium at Nuclear Blast seemed to represent a most pleasant musical resurrection (''All Hell Breaks Loose'' but especially ''The Antichrist''), the following years significantly deteriorated the positive judgment I'd made regarding Marcel's reunion with his old companions, reaching in 2008, the lowest point in their career (if you don't consider the disaster/ghost ''The Least Successful Human Cannonball''): the soporific "D.E.V.O.L.U.T.I.O.N", amicably nicknamed ''the festival of mid-tempo''. I was hoping for an easy climb back after such a searing disappointment. Well... Schmeir and company managed the arduous task of doing (probably) worse, releasing ''Day Of Reckoning''.

A new drummer, the unknown Vaaver, was hired, who (translated from the bio) ''...cut his teeth at McGill University in Montreal...''(as if it took a music degree to play Black Mass or Mad Butcher live!), today's Destruction decided to change course and return to smashing the accelerator hard, unleashing barrages of blind fury and adrenaline overdose, bombarding us with frenzied riffs spewed with suffocating madness, hurling themselves beyond the obstacle but (alas) leaving heart and passion behind. Is it a directive imposed by the label? Or a personal and conscientious choice? What seems clear is that, in the wild triumvirate of Teutonic trash, the Lorrach boys are getting paid on the right (Sodom) and left (Kreator), confirming the theory that the good Schmeir long ago shot his last fireworks, thus losing the direct comparison both with Petrozza and Angelripper.

Anyone who knows the character even a little, or has at least once been in the front rows at a Destruction concert, knows very well that Schmeir has a somewhat challenging personality. There's an alcoholic anecdote circulating (later confirmed by many official sources) that, at last year's Agglutination, after draining in just a few minutes the large supply of beer granted to him backstage, he allegedly threatened the organizers of not going on stage to play if they didn't immediately give him a second; more for the series ''He who drank the whole sea, can drink a bowl''.

But these are merely trivial gossip. The reality, unfortunately, is quite disarming.

The production is meticulously detailed, to the point of being ''plastic'', the cover is so malevolent that it wouldn't look out of place at the top of a hypothetical ranking of ''The Most Fashionable Big Horns In Music History'', but the admirable and appreciated mastery in balancing blasted tracks with groovier ones, in mixing almost inhuman speed passages with anthemic refrains, once again, where has it gone? It's no longer enough to clock in like any office worker; 2/3 well-conceived crowd-rousing pieces are no longer enough, which will inevitably fatten up the live setlist in the next concerts (''Devil's Advocate'', ''The Price'', ''Sorcerer Of Black Magic''), because, on the other hand, there are objectively too many anonymous and predictable episodes where aggression collides with frenzy only to clumsily cancel each other out (rarely have I heard such an insubstantial title track). I understand that inventiveness, the stroke of genius, come once in a while, but here we are talking about 10 years, guys, 4 consecutive albums. Of course, the album is not immediately to be flushed down the toilet, mind you; unfortunately for us, it is identical to the masses (and there can be no worse criticism for someone who once planted the flag of European Thrash); it plays on par with greenhorns who, when our guys were recording ''Eternal Devastation'' were still anxiously sucking on their mothers' teat.

I really don't want (and as a fan it pains me to say it) that Schmier, I don't know for what reason (creative slump? commercial sensitivity? lack of enthusiasm?) is content to perform the task, forgetting the duty of being among the top exponents of one of the most beloved metal genres; I really don't want Destruction to have finally been convinced that, if you package a product well, you know it will sell and that fans, either out of attachment to the band or just for collecting, will buy it anyway regardless of its intrinsic value.

Because if that were the case, if for Schmeir the art of music had now become simple standardization, wouldn't it be better for him to really go back behind the ovens at Barracuda pizzeria in Efringen-Kirchen, spending his days downing beer kindly gifted to him by some Rhenish yeast salesman, perhaps a metalhead himself?