As my good colleague Dan Swinhoe recently noted in his stellar review of the new Reign of Fury album, it’s easy to have preconceptions about thrash albums based on the cover alone. The artwork for Greek quintet Bio-Cancer is exactly what you’d expect from a latter day thrash outfit; designed by genre stalwart Andrei Bouzikov, luridly coloured, biohazard symbol and a freakish, multi-limbed mutant. So far so Municipal Waste, right? Well you’d be wrong, for Bio-Cancer aren’t here to party; they’re here to rip your fucking head off.
It’s fairly safe to say that Tormenting the Innocent (Candlelight) is one of the most vicious sounding, aggressive thrash albums of all time. If you think this is hyperbole, do yourself a favour and listen to the barbaric, light-speed assault on the senses that is opening track ‘Obligated to Incest’ and if you’re still standing, strap yourself in for a further half-an hour or so of brutal, yet catchy riffs, devastating blast-beats and feral, demonic shrieks courtesy of the band’s ace in the hole; vocalist Lefteris who delivers his lines like Steve Sousa with a piranha forcibly inserted up his backside.
It’s not hard to see why the band has described their sound as “ear-piercing thrash” when tracks such as ‘Boxed Out’ and the ninety-second maelstrom that is ‘Haters Gonna… Suffer!’ are akin to having skewers inserted in your lugholes. But just when you thought you had them figured out, what sounds like an oboe commences ‘F(r)iends or Fiends’ and the band demonstrate just what superbly skilled musicians they are, as lethal melo-death style guitar lines, mature rhythmic interplay between bass and drums and a gloriously exuberant solo blow the roof off.
Deftly welding skull-crushing power with measured songwriting nous, Bio-Cancer are that rarest of things; a thrash band with its own identity. Disgustingly talented, full of beans and proof that being pissed-off can be pretty damn fun; these lads have a future as bright as the glow from a field of toxic waste ahead of them.
8.5/10
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JAMES CONWAY