Sometimes you don’t know you miss a band until you remember they’ve been gone.  For California’s Light This City, it’s been over eight years since they broke up. Then they put out a new album in Terminal Bloom (Creator- Destructor) and it sounds like they never left. Plus the production is a killer. It sounds clean and gritty at the same time. Zach Ohren has once again produced a melodic thrash and death metal masterpiece.

Terminal Bloom doesn’t sound like a cash grab reunion, it feels like a genuine ‘we’re back motherfucker” record. It’s almost happy, in the sense of joy that emotes from each song. With the acoustic calm before the storm beginning of ‘Reality in Dissaray’, the screams of Laura Nichols, and the guitar tones of Ryan Hansen and Steve Hoffman are some of the crunchiest I’ve ever heard from them. 

The single and video for ‘Agents of Fate’ pretty much shows you that Ben Murray is an underrated drumming powerhouse. The other half of the rhythm section, Jon Frost is the low-end stuffing to this thrashtasic turkey. Just check out tracks ‘Neverending’ and ‘Extinguished’ to hear him solidify the grooving, head-nodding tunes.

This album really could have come out right after Stormchaser. With songs like the title track, which has my favourite ending and ‘The Wake of My Will, you forget about the gap. I’m already waiting for the next album. Welcome back Oakland’s finest.

“I return to the city, that I’ve spent so many years.” – ‘Wildheart’

8.5/10

OMAR CORDY