Municipal Waste - Hazardous Mutation

Artist: Municipal Waste
Album: Hazardous Mutation
Genre: Crossover Thrash
Origin: USA
Year: 2005

All I really have to say is if you like old-school thrash metal or hardcore punk, you'll probably really like this album (it's way better than their more recent albums, in my opinion). I just got back from their concert at Tankcrimes Brainsqueeze, where they played with Vitamin X and Toxic Holocaust. It was a lot of fun!

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The Empire Shall Fall - Awaken

Artist: The Empire Shall Fall
Album: Awaken
Genre: Metalcore
Year: 2009
Origin: USA

This is a band with a frontman who's more famous for a band I couldn't care less about, Killswitch Engage. That certainly wasn't the reason I first listened to Awaken! I heard the track These Colors Bleed on a local college radio station's metal show that commonly plays this type of metalcore-type music, and I liked it a lot more than I usually do. I have to say that the breakdowns throughout the album don't do much for me, but most of the riffs are quite solid, both the clean and harsh vocals are really good, and the openly political lyrics are neat.

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Punch - Punch

Artist: Punch
Album: Punch
Genre: Hardcore / Thrash Punk
Year: 2009
Origin: USA

Punch is a powerviolence/thrashcore/very-fast-punk band from my local metropolis, San Francisco. The female vocalist is extremely fierce, which accompanies the band's blistering speed and heaviness perfectly. The lyrics are of course quite important to the band, with vegan and feminist ideologies featured prominently in those that I read. I only came across this, along with the band's only previous release, the Eyeless EP, very recently, but I think this is definitely a promising young group.

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Yellow Machinegun - Bean Ball

Artist: Yellow Machinegun
Album: Bean Ball
Genre: Crossover Thrash
Year: 2001
Origin: Japan

Yellow Machinegun is three overly cute Japanese women who play a surprising hardcore / thrash mix that will please fans of Municipal Waste and the like. I really like bands with an image that doesn't fit their scene. Sorry, no time for more of a review!

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Revocation - Empires of the Obscene

Artist: Revocation
Album: Empires of the Obscene
Genre: Death Metal
Year: 2008
Origin: USA

Revocation comes up big with this debut album, a very thrashy death metal release. As you may know, I'm not big into death metal unless it has something special going for it. And this band does, with brilliant songwriting and thrash riffs that should really make anyone wonder why people buy that monotonous crap from Cannibal Corpse and the host of other generically br00tal death metal bands.

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Toxic Holocaust - An Overdose of Death

Artist: Toxic Holocaust
Album: An Overdose of Death
Genre: Thrash
Year: 2008
Origin: USA

Olde-school crossover-styled thrash with harsh vocals is what you get from Toxic Holocaust. At first the name and album title were just corny enough to keep me from listening to this new release, but it now makes my tops of 2008. It's the kind of music that causes involuntary neck spasms as you drive to work at your dead-end job. Yeah I'm talking to you, Mr./Ms. I-wish-it-was-the-80s-forever. Get a haircut!

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