Hatriot - Heroes of Origin (2013)

Holy open lesions, Buttman! Now this is how you write a fucking thrash metal album, by George! In fact, Hatriot sounds better at sounding like Exodus than Exodus has in a very, very long time. Ol' Zet must've really drilled the "classics" into his kid's skulls, because I swear, if I hadn't known any better I would've have thought these songs to have been written by Gary Holt himself. Not only is the guitar style here more than similar to Mr. Holt's, but the riffs tend to lean towards the more "notier" compositions such as those found on 'Pleasures of the Flesh' and 'Fabulous Disaster', which, for me is a recipe for complete and total domi-fucking-nation!

Vocally, Ol' Zet sounds more venomous and vehement than he has in well over 20 years, and thankfully the chuckles were left at the door. I'm surprised that at 49 this guy sounds better than he did during Exodus' heyday. Hat's off.

If there's anything to gripe about (aside from the lame cover art, which really, with music this fucking good, who gives a shit, eh?) it's that the pace of the album is so fucking unrelenting that a few of the songs tend to get lost in the shuffle and things start to sort of jumble together. But believe me, that is only because this is such a vicious fucking attack on the senses that you tend to become overwhelmed by it all.

I am honestly beyond impressed with this! You can forget about hearing a bunch of homo-melodic bullshit (such as that found on the last few Exodus albums). No tough-guy breakdowns. No attempts at "fitting in" with current trends. None of that stupid shit. This is 100% grade-A Bay Area thrash methodically designed to kick your fucking ass!