Kayser
Frame The World... Hang It On The Wall

Fortunately, there are still bands that can reconcile you with a musical genre that seemed to belong to the past. The old Thrash metal bands of the '80s, apart from the indestructible Slayer, seem lost in other matters. Metallica have been in an identity crisis for more than ten years, Megadeth break up and reform with different musicians around the figure of Mustaine, Anthrax have expelled the "excellent" Bush to return to the line-up of the eighties, Testament the same.

Thus, while in the States bands like Trivium are praised, technically impeccable but lacking any ideas, fortunately in Europe there are bands like the Swedish Kayser capable of bringing some small innovations to the genre without, to be clear, being geniuses.

Their skill lies in combining two genres such as Thrash and a certain seventies-style Hard Rock, continuing what bands like Amorphis had experimented before them while being more direct and not using synths and keyboards. Moreover, Kayser are not novices but musicians with significant experiences. Above all the singer Spice, already an appreciated singer of Spiritual Beggars, a band devoted to certain psychedelic hard rock sounds of the '70s, the guitarist Matt Svensson already in The Defaced, or the drummer Rob Ruben in Mushroom River Band.

After the debut "Kaiserhof" in 2005, the nearly fifty minutes of the new album flow great between pure thrash assaults like the opening "THE CAKE", the Slayer-like "BORN INTO THIS" (with a "singer" instead of Araya's spoken-scream) or "JAKE". Heavy mid-tempos and neck-breakers broken up by melodic breaks like "LOST IN THE MUD", "EVOLUTION", "NOT DEAD... YET", "CHEAP GLUE" with great guitar solos from the Svensson-Petersson duo. Songs reminiscent of the best Megadeth such as "EVERLASTING", the acoustic instrumental "FALL," and then the true gem of the album : "ABSCENCE", almost ten minutes (never predictable) of pure psychedelic visionism with SPICE proving to be a superb singer in every section.

Every note of this album is played with passion and it is difficult to find weak points or passages used just as fillers. The ability to combine savagery and melody so well is not common. In short, if you like Bay-area Thrash, the seventies hard rock of Black Sabbath, some psychedelic passages in the Pink Floyd style, and a bit of Stoner, you absolutely must listen to this CD.