• 1
• 2
• 3
• 4
• 5

There was a lot of chatter about The Onslaught, which was a pretty cool modern Thrash album that didn't suffer from most of the defects of modern Thrash. Black Rivers Flow does fall more into that trap, especially with some "core-ish" tendencies, but it's still listenable – after giving it time to grow on you, that is. This is very clean stuff with a strong "commercial" vibe (commercial as far as metal goes anyway, we're not in mainstream territory yet). Bit of a groove here and there, some catchy riffs that sometimes save an otherwise uneventful song, and the occasional "fuck yeah" moments make this at least entertaining.

I can't quite get used to the vocals that alternate between decent, near-core, and clean-but-harmful-to-my-ears. What sucks is that they tend to stick in your head even if you don't want them to (the vocal melodies just don't fit the music style). Black Rivers Flow isn't particularly "offensive," and as far as modern Thrash goes, Lazarus A.D. are definitely among the best, but except for some really cool passages here and there, there's nothing here to draw the usual Thrash listener back to this one on a regular basis. Whether the balance between the good and the bad here is in your favor, well, check out some samples and see if this is your poison.