Destruction

Born To Perish

Written by: RUB on 17/09/2019 22:35:06

The Teutonic thrashers of Destruction can soon celebrate their 40th Anniversary as a band, which is quite the accomplishment. Lately, however, it would seem like the group has been running on fumes, at least as far as the quality of their musical output goes. The last handful of albums have either been re-recordings of their heyday (“Thrash Anthems” and “Thrash Anthems II”), or lukewarm, mediocre outings that have quickly faded into oblivion. For anyone familiar with the band, it should come as no surprise that the veterans still play thrash metal in a pure form, and as such they haven’t made many fixes to their sound over the years — if any, as a matter of fact. Would Schmier, Mike & co. be able to restore their former glory with this latest offering “Born to Perish”, or will this release be as quickly forgotten as its latest predecessors?

The album definitely gets off to a good start. On both the title track and “Inspired by Death”, we see Destruction play all the right strings, and even though these might not be straight-up classics, they still make for some pretty solid tracks. The riffs are fast and pack enough punch to keep the listener interested, but then, already on track three “Betrayal”, and especially the following “Rotten”, things start to go downhill. Take the latter for example: the clichés in it are downright cringeworthy, starting with the lyrics “I am more evil than Satan”, and then the repeated “Rotten, rotten to the core” in the chorus, which send all the wrong kinds of shivers down my spine. In fact, this might very well be one of the worst Destruction tracks I’ve ever heard! Not even an interesting drum pattern, clever usage of snare, or a great riff can help it pique my interest. This is of course not the general impression I get of the album as a whole, but it still gives an idea of the level we are at. The same goes for “Ratcatcher”, which, though it is not quite as terrible, stands out as another definitively weak piece of music. It makes you wonder why these two songs were even included, especially when the album clocks in at more than 50 minutes of runtime. And as the highlights in the bottom of this article show, there’s really only a few tracks worth highlighting here. The rest, like those mentioned just before, rarely manage to stand out in any kind of meaningful way and most of them quickly sink into oblivion, and I would be very surprised if the majority of these songs ever get airtime in a live setting.

Disregarding the former paragraph, the general thing about “Born to Perish” is that it would actually be a decent thrash record had it not been written by a band as famed and capable as Destruction. The problem with such a seasoned band is that I simply expect more than run-of-the-mill, don’t-fix-what-ain’t-broken-type stuff — like we have seen on the last couple of albums by their countrymen in Accept, who have written newer songs that are already worthy of being branded classics. The good thing about “Born to Perish”, at the very least, is that it ensures Destruction is set for another tour, which is the setting in which these veterans still excel in. And while I’m certain that one or maybe two of the songs off this record will find their way onto those setlists, the truly worthwhile tracks are few and far in between, thus rendering this album easy to forget. And with so many great records having already come out this year, I’d advise you to just go ahead and skip this one.

5

Download: Inspired by Death, Born to Perish, Tyrants of the Netherworld, Fatal Flight 17
For the fans of: Dark Angel, Kreator, Overkill, Sodom, Tankard,
Listen: Facebook

Release date 09.08.2019
Nuclear Blast

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