Aratic are a four piece thrash band from Finland, and despite their very young age, have produced an album that shows an immense amount of promise. The whole album is delivered with fire and aggression, the songs are quick and to the point.

In fact, there are only two songs on this album longer than four minutes, and this lends to the overall frenetic pace of the album. Songs are packed with riffs that would instantly remind you of the eighties, but all credit goes to Aratic for wearing influences proudly on their sleeves without ever once sounding like they are trying to copy anything before them. This is a band that is clearly trying to find their sound and is doing a pretty good job of it.

Songs like, “Shrooms” and, “Destructing The Light” show that Aratic are capable of more than just a three minute thrash tune, displaying a shift in pace and tone which work very well and compliment the short fast tracks like, “Residents Of Evil”, “Satan’s Witnesses”, and, “To The Early Grave”. Guitar, drums and bass all sound very good, vocals for the most part sound good too, barking and growling out over the gunning guitars.

I found the low death growls, which are used on one or two tracks but in particular on, “Lobotomy Christianus”, just threw me off a little. I felt like they could have done without the very low death growls and still kept the menace and evil intent behind the songs and lyrics that they were aiming for.

To be fair though, that’s one slight criticism of what I think is a very good debut from some Finns who show a lot of promise for the future. It’s a good, solid thrash album played with venom and enthusiasm but you won’t find anything new here. Don’t let that dissuade you from giving them a listen, you won’t regret it.

Stand out tracks for me: “Shrooms” and “To The Early Grave”