Electric Vengeance: Street Metal Attack

I've been following Electric Vengeance for a while now, enjoying their turn at churning out raw punk/thrash with humorous overtones. Those antics continue with their new EP titled Street Metal Attack.

Whether it was intended or not, the opening track Keep it Electric is a bonafide punk-feuled homage to Metallica's Kill 'Em All, complete with classic chugging riffs and Phantom Lord-ish, reverbed-out vocal attack.

Catchy and dynamic, Keep it Electric is key, along with a few choice elements found in the following three tracks, to draw more eyes toward Electric Vengeance.

In fact, the opening song almost killed the rest of the EP for me. Not that the other songs are bad, but initially the other three tracks didn't hold up to the tone set by Keep it Electric. HOWEVER…

…upon further listening, the others definitely grew on me, including the title track Street Metal Attack, highlighting an east coast flavor with a heavy dose of pure heavy metal in the solo section.

Regarding the aforementioned "choice elements", Electric Vengeance's use of traditional heavy/power metal with their punk-laden thrash gives them a killer edge over other dime-a-dozen crossover bands. Both songs Mosh With the Dead and Ouija at Witching Hour utilize this mix of styles well, never sounding forced and always knocking the song dynamics up a few notches. I love it!


Interested thrashers can hit Electric Vengeance up here.

Avenues of Approach ROCKS!

Texas metal men AVENUES OF APPROACH offer up an impressive well-rounded kick to their music, mixing it up between fist-pumping metal and gasoline-chugging hard rock.

With AoA's new EP, titled New Revolution, they are churning out a brand of metal that is rather accessible, walking that fine line of producing music that is both pit-worthy as well as something you could buy at Target.

Damn if that doesn't sound like a backhanded compliment, but the statement truly isn't. AoA simply know how to write relatively wide-appeal metal with muscle, all the while evading the Load/Reload road entirely.

Vocalist Brock Brooks freakin' nails it on these songs. Without his vocal dynamic, the music (as good as it already is) would definitely loose some impact. Brooks's seemingly effortless delivery brings to mind doses of Pantera, Coal Chamber (!), and even the Foo Fighters (!!), and utilizes his varied technique like a splash of lighter fluid to keep the music burning.

Truthfully, my hard thrash biases started stinging me when Brooks would go into clean-singing mode, but once I actually listened to what was going on in the music, that all changed. Now I couldn't imagine songs such as Through Darkness and A Test of Wills without that specific dynamic.

Although Brooks shines on this album, the rest of the band holds their own just fine, hammering out tight guitar work and a rhythm section that drives this sh*t through walls. Bad ass!

Purists beware, because although AoA definitely uses thrash in their music arsenal, they also add multi layers of groove metal and hard rock, using the sub-genres to their advantage.

Check out the goodies below and then hit up Avenues Of Approach here.