Amorphia – Merciless Strike

Amorphia – Merciless Strike
Awakening Records
Date: 15/01/2020
Running Time: 36:04
Review by Victor Augusto
8.5/10
Once again, I’m astonished to see how far Heavy Metal music can go around the world. Recently, I reviewed a band from Bangladesh, and I talked about how if access to information through the internet didn’t exist, we probably would never know about smaller bands from many places around the world, and now here I am, finding another amazing band! This time, it’s a band from India, pretty much next door to Bangladesh, called Amorphia! The thing that impressed me most about them is how they display a very experienced kind of style, that I would associate with a band on their third or fourth album release, living in a country where their music is popular, and the Heavy Metal scene is strong. Actually, it’s only the band’s second album! But from what I can see, they’ve been received well by the critics since their first release.
Eighties Old School Thrash Metal. Yes, this definition mostly definitely is Amorphia’s music. On first listen, I felt like I had travelled back to the days when I listened to old German releases like Kreator or Sodom. To be more specific, if you took the war theme disgraces that Sodom talked about, Tom Angelripper’s singing style, and the guitar technique of Kreator, you’d probably get something similar to Amorphia. Their track, ‘Upcoming Terror’, is a perfect example of this. Of course, this is just a reference to help you picture the band’s spirit. There are many more influences, from all the old school Thrash Metal bands.
Some songs, like ‘Radiation Overdose’, which is my favorite track from the album, make you imagine the concept from the lyrics. It’s political criticism about the traumas and consequences of war, and it got me thinking that this theme is still important to reflect upon, even though bands have been using these kind of lyrics for decades, because all these political issues are still happening around the world.
What we have here is a short album with all songs in the same cadence, just exploring different techniques on drums, or solos. Vasu Chandran’s riffs are amazing and responsible for bringing the heaviness to the music. I liked the bass lines from Faizaan Mecci, and they’re not hidden behind the guitar wall. They create interesting structures that are independent from the rest of the sound. Vivek Prasad plays linear fast rhythms throughout the album and uses a lot of drum loops to make the music interesting. The snare drum sound is loud and it gave me the sense hearing Amorphia at a concert.
As I said before, all tracks have similar structures and are amazing, but the album’s title track ‘Merciless Strike’ is a bit different. This song chooses faster drum passages with double bass and explores faster guitar picking. That amazing independent bass line that I talked about by Faizaan Mecci is present in this song. It is, probably, the most complete song from the album.
“Merciless Strike”is just the band’s second album and Amorphia shows the maturity of a much more experienced band who live on the road and have many albums released. I have no idea if Thrash Metal is a popular genre in India to inspire new bands to play as well as Amorphia, but I can assure you that this is a pure Old School Thrash Metal album, with good production that sounds aggressive, but with a clear sonority at the same time!
TRACKLISTING:
1. Death Zone
2. Judgement Day
3. Merciless Strike
4. Mutants’ Rise
5. Upcoming Terror
6. Radiation Overdose
7. Martian Law
8. Blazing Glares
LINE-UP:
Faizaan Mecci – Bass, Backing Vocals
Vivek Prasad – Drums
Vasu Chandran – Vocals, Guitars
LINKS:
www.facebook.com/Amorphiathrash/
www.instagram.com/amorphia_thrash/
www.twitter.com/AmorphiaI
www.amorphiathrash.bandcamp.com/
www.youtu.be/Wn5CgVoS2UA

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