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The hell? I have been a fan of this band ever since their first disc, the messy thrashing disaster of Carnage, and I hold both The Ultimate Destroyer and War Metal Battle Master as pinnacles of proto-thrash, so I was excited to get a new album, and then horribly disappointed when I actually listened to it. This disc is a major let-down in almost every way. The first few times I spun this I thought it just wasn't sinking in, but then I really got down and examined this fucker to see why it wasn't clicking, and I found it pretty much has no substance to it.

This time LotM have traded in their aggressive Celtic Frost/Usurper attack for punk rock. Now, they always had a kick of punk in their sound, but it was an influence, not a major part of their work. This time the whole thing reeks of punk. Many of the songs on here do not even hit the two minute mark, and there are only four out of eleven tracks that pass three minutes. The guitar sound is a wussed-out waste of time, and the riffs are repetitive and dull. The vocals are weak, repetitive, and uninteresting, pumped up with multi-tracking and effects to make them sound beefier and failing. Here and there, as on the title track, or on "Blood From The Witch's Vein" they manage to conjure up some decent riffing, but overall this comes off as a sad waste of effort from a band who can do much, much better than this.