Band: FROM HELL
Country: USA
Title: Rats and Ravens
Label: Scourge Records / Fastball Music
Year: 2020
Style: Thrash Death Metal
Review:
This band seems to be some sort of a super-group featuring members that are or were involved in bands from the biggest of Thrash like Testament, Forbidden, Vicious Rumous, at one point in time it even featured Paul Bostaph from Slayer and Damien Sisson from Death Angel! So I guess it's a project of friends who usually hang around and want to do something different just for fun, or to try something else. Indeed From Hell bears the touch of Death Metal a bit more than their "usual" bands, but the backbone of it is still Thrash Metal; the resulting Thrash Death is sprinkled with royal-league melodic guitar solos which is probably my favorite part of it, a ton of theatrical keys effects and inserts that enhance the overall mystical atmosphere surrounding the band's music, a groovy, mostly mid-tempo rhythm section, fat Thrash Metal guitar riffs (with some Power Metal influences, too), and a vocalist that mostly uses Thrash Metal screams, but goes into narration mode at times too. Unfortunately when the vocalist goes clean vocals it totally ruins it for me, I don't know, I can't stand his clean vocals at all (check out Don't Cry for Help for an example), I very much prefer him screaming his lungs out all the time. But the guitar solos, oh man, those guitar solos are absolutely stellar, whenever there's a passage with guitar solos it feels like the music ascends 10 classes over what normally is. Bottom line it's clear we're dealing with well-seasoned musicians here, but this feels like a one-off project from start to finish although the band has been around for 10 years now, it doesn't have the force and catchiness to get to the top of the genre. Try it out yourselves, as a suggestion I'd name the last two tracks: Body Rats and Am I Dead.
Reviewed by Adrian
Rating: 7.5/10