Labels: Czar Of Bullets – LC Records – Non Stop Music
Review by: Alex Deller
This Swiss mob have been knocking around for 20 years now, which is a fair old innings when you’re a metal band. ‘Fake’, their tenth album, definitely sounds born of that point in the 90s when a bunch of thrash metal bands figured they’d be better off if they sounded a bit more like Pantera, the relentlessly choppy Testament-style riffing riven with large grooving parts and the slurred vocals reminiscent of a Phil Anselmo post-bong-hit coughing fit. Elsewhere, the occasional Hatebreed-esque bro-down rears its bullet-shaped head, a fondness for machine-tooled chromatics suggest a hint of Meshuggah and some pretty corking solos cartwheel in and out of earshot to offset the brutality. The mix is amenable if hardly revelatory and, at 13 songs, tends towards the wearisome at times. Still, it’s ably delivered and sounds like the band are having a whale of a time despite two decades in each other’s company, which has to count for something when you consider how long most marriages last these days.