As my colleague Chris Chellis pointed out, it’s a bit tough to spot authentic thrash revival bands outside of the current crop of fantastic LA bands, so you’d think having the word thrash in your album title would help. You’d also think that every article describing a band that says "thrash" in front of their name is a thrash band. Keyword in those sentences is think. Not to try and pigeonhole a band into a strict classification, but when you say the word thrash I think most people summon to mind the Bay Area style or even the German variant, not the modern neo thrash made famous by so many European bands. So despite the album title, and maybe because of their European origin, Blood Tsunami is passing off a well-played but fairly standard form melodeath dressed up with a few, groove-free neo thrash trappings as the real thing.

That’s not to say they’re not good at what they do. It’s a pretty scathing form of the style made even more so by the unintelligible high pitched shrieks of the lead singer. At times they remind of a blast free Light This City, bringing forth an intense, dual guitar melodic savagery that’s certainly impressive in its energy and execution. Not to mention the speedy percussion supplied by the infamous Faust (ex-Emperor). But for some reason, despite the obvious talent, I can’t get past the point that this is supposed to be a thrash record.

Aside from a few gallops here and there, the closest they come to summoning a true thrash vibe is in some stellar Slayer riff worship. It first pops up in the third track “Rampage Of Revenge” followed by a “South Of Heaven” sounding section in “Devour The Flames” but really hits a peak with a slightly reworked but very recognizable version of the main riff off “Raining Blood” on the song “Torn Apart” (as opposed to sticking it on the earlier “Let Blood Rain”, go figure). These sections provide some mild entertainment in trying to spot the riffs but also highlight their biggest differentiator. So far, few of the current crop of thrash bands has really honed in on a lead guitar centric Slayer like sound, preferring the more party/crossover vibe of bands like Municipal Waste. If Blood Tsunami spent more time crafting that part of their sound and less pushing melodeath business as usual they’d have a far more original, inasmuch as a thrash revival band can be original, and properly named record.

Aside from the two opening cuts all the songs are close to or over the five minute mark, with the instrumental “Godbeater” topping out at ten minutes. “Godbeater” is interesting in that it’s the most stylistically different and diverse song of the bunch. It reminds me heavily of the instrumentals Metallica used to tack on their early work, only crossed with the more aggressive Slayer styled riffing. There’s an epic, majestic feel to the music, especially the haunting riff that rides through what would be the chorus in a normal song, but like a lot of their songs, they ride out a few good riff ideas for a bit too long. Like it or not, thrash songs aren’t supposed to be too long, which is why Slayer only tried that once on Hell Awaits. Of course this isn’t a thrash song so I guess they can do whatever the hell they want.

This record certainly stands up well when compared to the majority of the melodeath still being put out in frightening volumes but this is not a thrash revival band, no matter how hard the band and label might want it to be. A cynic might even think they were trying to jump on the thrash bandwagon before it leaves town again for another two decades but we’ll give them the benefit of the doubt. Of course if the trend sticks around for a bit maybe Blood Tsunami can take a page from the current LA bands and actually bring the thrash next go around.