Valkyrian Music

Scarlet Anger
Freakshow
Released 18th March 2016
Thrash Metal
Released via Hänsel & Gretel Records/M.I.G Music GmbH

The Luxembourgish thrash metal band Scarlet Anger are back with the second album ‘Freakshow’. This release comes four years after their successful debut album ‘Dark Reign’. The band cites classic ’80s and 90s comics and horror stories as the main inspiration for this new piece.

Horror stories and thrash metal tends to be a good combination. The best examples I can think of are classic, old Metallica songs such as ‘The Thing That Should Not Be’, inspired by the tales of H.P. Lovecraft or Iced Earth’s ‘Horror Show’ album. Speaking of H.P. Lovecraft… It seems that Scarlet Anger are also fans of his work, or at least the comics that his stories inspired, since the opening track on here is titled Awakening of The Elder God.

The horror themes continue with the suitably eerie-sounding The Haunted Place – House of Lost Souls which lives up to its namesake. Yet whilst the coarse vocals and the overall tone of this track have that dark and creepy atmosphere, some of the guitar parts are actually fairly melodic. The title track Welcome to the Freakshow is a completely different animal however, reflecting the band’s more aggressive style with ferociously fast guitar riffs and abrasive, shouting style vocals being the key features. Luckily there’s a good mixture of both the harsh, raw and the melodic thrash metal styles which gives the album enough variety to keep the listener interested. After all, it’s not easy to tune in to nearly fifty minutes worth of non-stop thrashing guitar riff barrage and shouting. Therefore it is good that you get the occasional slower, ballad-esque and melodic track such as An Unbelievable Story of A Stupid Boy to provide some relief to sore ears.

Overall, ‘Freakshow’ is a testament to how Scarlet Anger have developed and grown as a thrash metal band. Horror themes aside, the album essentially continues along the same path of modern thrash metal that was audible in Scarlet Anger’s debut.

4/5

Iza Raittila

This entry was posted on 18th March 2016 at 8:44 am and is filed under Review with tags Scarlet Anger, Thrash metal. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.