Bonded By Blood Feed The Beast

A band bold enough to name themselves after something as monumental as Exodus' landmark debut "Bonded By Blood" is either willing to live up to some serious expectations or too young and brash to know better. In the case of these LA thrash newcomers, it's a bit from both columns. Bonded By Blood are a barely legal bunch of thrash revivalists whose relative inexperience definitely seems to have helped them get in touch with the true spirit of thrash. It would certainly be easy to discount these guys as just another in a wave of kids nostalgic for glory days they weren't born for, but Feed The Beast is an impressively genuine debut that powerfully displays the band's face-melting riffage, abrasive vocals and youthfully irreverent attitude. Everything from the band's Nathan Explosion/Terminator-esque mascot to their secretly silly album title ("Feed The Beast" is a slogan for fast food chain Del Taco) would suggest that the tongue might be planted too firmly in cheek for quality music to triumph, but Bonded By Blood make it apparent from the disc's opener ("Immortal Life") that they're as serious about their music as they are about having fun. As their name suggests, they are heavily influenced by early California thrash in all aspects of their music. Not surprisingly, vocalist Jose "Aladdin" Barrales takes most of his cues from the Paul Baloff school of "singing," which might be a bit of a hard sell for those not accustomed to that decidedly acquired taste. There's seems to be a fairly strong hint of Megadeth peppered throughout the record as well. Altogether, Bonded By Blood do a nice job of paying homage to their influences without necessarily ripping them off, creating new songs that seem to follow very much in the style of their predecessors. Fans of Municipal Waste, SSS or any of the number of similarly-styled modern thrash acts will either be tracking this record down immediately or rightfully wondering what makes this record any different from the rest. The most obvious answer is that where those acts seem to draw their influence more from the crossover side of things, Bonded By Blood are more directly incorporating Exodus, Megadeth and even a little Motorhead into their sound and keeping it fast, furious and metal as fuck. Through eleven original tracks (plus two bonus tracks on a relatively wasteful second disc) these guys don't let up for a second. The only disturbingly out of place moment on the whole record is the album bonus track, a metal version of the "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles" theme song. If you're under 21 and want to be taken seriously, singing a cartoon theme song isn't a great move, even as a bonus track. Bottom Line: As part of Earache's ever-growing stable of young thrash acts, Bonded By Blood may have a hard time standing out from their labelmates. Feed The Beast is the most exciting and re-listenable thrash record I've heard since Municipal Waste's Hazardous Mutation and though it's definitely not as amazing as that record was, it's a hell of a lot of fun.