Love them or hate them, Power Trip left an indelible mark on the world of thrash metal. Upon their mid 2010s breakthrough, thrash metal shifted from happy go lucky, party ’til you puke, Suicidal Tendencies brawling with Tankard ignorance, to a much darker, brooding sound that drew heavily from old school hardcore and death metal. In the wake of this explosion were bands like Enforced, Paralysis, and the subject of today’s review, SNAFU. I briefly remember SNAFU around this era. If memory serves right, I’m pretty sure I even saw them at legendary Chicago DIY haunt The Fallout. Truth be told, I didn’t even know they were still around upon the arrival of a promo invitation for this here album, Exile//Banishment.
It’s been six years since the last SNAFU release and musically speaking, not much has changed since. The band maintains all the sonic characteristics I remember of their early work. If anything, they’ve only gotten more frantic and chaotic. Exile//Banishment opens with the devastating “Eyes of Your God”. This is aggressive crossover with a misanthropic, deadly edge. The riffing and attitude comes off as Beneath the Remains era Sepultura if the band hailed from New York instead of Brazil. Other cuts boasting old school death metal tendencies include the militant “Wake of Vultures” and the lethal “No Rites (For the Less Dead)”.
When they aren’t flirting with death/thrash, SNAFU dives head first into the rough and tumble world of hardcore. You’ve got your midtempo mosh mania (“Bring Suffering”), gargantuan grooves (“The Pear of Anguish”), throwdown thrash (“Closed Casket Habits”, “Monarch”), and a healthy dose of straightforward 80s worship (“Soils of Blood”). No matter what approach is being explored, each is being executed with equal amount of fire and fury, falling smack dab in the middle of the metalpunk amalgamation.
The only downside to this release is that a little past the halfway point, things start to get a bit derivative. The riffs and solos, while slamming like a mutha, start to bleed into each other and the overall arrangements get a bit predictable. The album’s 35 minute running time (brief by today’s “fill up the CD” standards) shouldn’t be an issue, but I feel it would be even more effective it its purpose if it clocked in at a little under 30 minutes instead. Think of all the classic crossover albums that do so: Corrosion of Conformity’s Animosity, Agnostic Front’s Cause for Alarm, S.O.D.’s Speak English or Die. I could go on.
Occasional clichés aside, Exile//Banishment is an unrelenting beast of a crossover album that has enough for both metalheads and punks to collectively enjoy and clash over. It’s crossover gone awry in a sea of insanity and misanthropy. What more could you ask for?
6 out of 10
Label: Housecore Records
Genre: Crossover Thrash
For fans of: Power Trip, Enforced, Sepultura