Top 10 Thrash Metal Albums of 2024 #6 Disarray - Religious Disease
Xmas is upon us ya filthy animals! Time to do a Top 10 Thrash Metal Albums of 2024 and see how the year has treated us!
I don't know what the hell is going on in the Land of Meatballs, but there's not only been lots of very young Thrash Metal bands popping up in Sweden - these bands are all damn good! Stay tuned for some more lovin' on this front in this very list - and the afterthoughts! But for now there's no way around it: Disarray is proper old school thrash metal if I ever heard any.
With a nasty cadence "Forbidden of Speech" snatches you and rolls you up for a ride. Lucas' throaty snarls tear at you, the screaming guitars saw your limbs off as the boomy drums stomp over your very dead torso. Its an instant pull back in time for your mind wanders to the dire blooming of Sodom, Kreator and Venom.
Stories echoing the pandemic and everything generally goind down to toilet is on track with what you'd come to expect from the genre. The title of the album cuts to the chase blatantly. Nothing we haven't heard before, but that of course doesn't make it any less valid. There is a fresh angle here from a young person's pov and that's always tremendously precious.
Religious Disease has more than few splashes of Speed Metal and Punk here, and more than occasionally Disarray plain visits the Blackened Thrash Metal front. If that isn't a heritage of Thrash Metal I don't know what is! "Bound to Kill" is a simple-minded beast as "Psychosis" rightfully so dips into much darker and eviler tones. There's a crapton of just the right kind of energy in this one that every metalhead of the thrash subspecies will feel right at home with - guaranteed.
The magnum opus on Religious Disease is undoubtedly "Guilty Until Proven Innocent", as it evokes everything the band can muster from rough romping to a sullen manifesto of shreddage and shriek.
The album sounds just right and the songwriting is generally very solid but the ol' envelope hasn't been pushed. Songs do have the scent of classic structurization but lack the character of melody and invention, and thus mush together.
Songs aren't super memorable, rather they're super enjoyable!
That is more than most thrash bands can achieve. I'm having a fucking great time with this album but nothing on this one really has that stick-with-it-ness. I'm going more like "Disarray's latest album is damn good, why don't I put that album on next."
This is one of those bands y'all need to keep your eye on - the foundation is solid and the next step is to tear away from genre conventions while sticking to the course. Be brave, go forth and die proudly with those boots on. That's how to genre greats became immortal.
I'm already a fucking fan - now get those ground breaking songs!
THRASH-O-METER
★★★☆☆ SONGWRITING
★★★☆☆ THEMES
★★★☆☆ LONGEVITY
★★★★☆ PRODUCTION
★★★★★ THRASHABILITY
SCORE:
★★★★☆ BADASS SH!T
(decimals are for weaklings)