It is hard to believe German modern thrashers Dew-Scented have been issuing music for over two decades, and have built quite the underground following over the years. Their latest release Insurgent is a collection of three new songs, seven live tracks and cover versions of various favorites of the band.
‘Confronting Entropy’ and ‘Guided From The Dead Light’ are two previously unreleased songs that follow material from the past few recordings. For whatever reason those songs did not make those albums or used as b-sides, they still represent the band’s modern thrash sound with lots of groove and plenty of metallic punch within their sound.
The next seven tunes are live versions of ‘Sworn To Obey,’ ‘Turn To Ash,’ ‘Soul Poison,’ ‘Storm Within,’ ‘Cities Of the Dead,’ ‘Never To Return,’ and ‘Acts Of Rage,’ which were recorded throughout their 2012 tour. Those versions were all captured well, and brought out the pure intensity of the band.
The last seven songs are bonus tracks from previous records (‘Acts of Rage’, ‘Death of Common Sense’) and cover songs from Incubus (now Opprobrium), Inside Out, Wasted Youth, Judge, Powermad and Genocide Superstars. They bring out a fresh approach to many of these classic songs, showing a different side of themselves by paying tribute to their thrash/death metal and hardcore influences.
While these seventeen songs are worthy of a listen, it leans more with intentions of being an anniversary release than a brand new record. The first couple of tracks at times may not blend in well with the older material; it still gives a good cross-section of the band’s history and showing different sides of their sound. But for a band like Dew-Scented to release two decades worth of thrash metal is quite an accomplishment and this collection shows quite a lot.
7/10
Rei Nishimoto