With today's Thrash revival, the lyrical content has clearly changed. While back in the day, the concept of Thrash was aggression and themes about war and other dark topics that spoke about the society at that time, today it's been changed thanks to the youthful new groups that are embracing it. To these bands, it's not about war. Instead, today's Thrash is often about video games, comics, or just general topics from their childhood. While this doesn't cover all bands in the revival, and it isn't necessarily a bad thing, amongst the Metal fans there was one obvious trend involving video games, and it took a newer Thrash act to fully embrace a concept that I personally was waiting to see happen: 8-Bit Thrash. Lich King has embraced this idea, and for their fourth full-length recording bring an 8-bit NES style of music to nine of their pre-existing songs. And, well...yeah, it's happened.
While it's not the most god awful idea in the world, it seriously could have been handled better. However, considering this is a limited run of 299 hand-numbered copies (according to the press release), it stands out more as a limited compilation then a real album, which is a good thing for some of these tracks. While I personally enjoy hearing some great songs done in this style, I also prefer them to do be done, and many of these tracks are done very close to the original sound, but ultimately feel worthless as 8-bit tracks in the first place. "Lich King III (World Gone Dead)", for example, sounds like a combination of various hums and clicks that one might expect to hear deep inside an MRI machine at the hospital with very little else going on to the song [and this is something I should know given all the tests I go through due to my medical conditions so if you're not sure if that's true, take my word for it].
Sadly, the material here often doesn't include anything to really make any of the songs stand out from one another. Sure, some songs actually do sound good, like "ED-209" having some great melodic sections to it that really makes it stand out, but some songs feel generic with no atmosphere, and don't really seem to capture any of the Thrash essence to them. This is one of the few songs on here that actually sounds good sadly. The main drawback is a heavy emphasis on the drums of the recording. The blips that represent the guitars really sound weak, and often just feel lame. Where "ED-209" at least had some essence going to it with the higher blips adding some melody to it, and the drumming felt a little richer, songs like "Toxic Zombie Onslaught" ultimately feel hollow with the guitars with a repetitive beeping for the guitars against a steady drum beat that makes the song sound hollow. But, that hollow repetitive drum beat doesn't exist through the whole thing, as "Act of War" features a good amount of changes to the double bass that allows for the guitar parts to shine through, and the more technical elements really become more unique on this track, though it's not until later in the song that it really shows what this release could be possible of. The same can be said for the final track, "Attack of the Wrath of the War of the Death of the Strike of the Sword of the Blood of the Beast", though it doesn't offer as unique an experience, the song has a little more distinction to it to keep the song from sounding like the same song you've heard already many times, but that's more as the song moves on since the start is a bit rocky and does manage to not sound that unique from any other on the recording.
Much of the good material of this release seems to come more from some passages then whole tracks. While "ED-209" is an enjoyable track that really focuses more on guitars then anything else, which becomes a huge plus in distinguishing between tracks, and the random video game sound effects added for certain bass drops make those parts unique, though a little awkward considering it's an explosion sound effect or something similar for a bass drop where "Wage Slave" executes bass drops through the actual beeping of the 8-bit sound properly, there's just not really any other interesting full songs on here. "Wage Slave" does offer up some nice variety that keeps the sound fresh from start to finish, but for the most part it's just certain parts of passages in a song that will keep the listener attentive in the end. "Behaver", for instance, has a few sections that are entertaining, and the guitar solo sounds great in this manner. The same goes with "Combat Mosh" and "Black Metal Sucks", but for those it's mostly the guitar solo. Aside that, one thing many 8-bit renditions have going for them when executed properly is atmosphere, and that's one of the huge drawbacks to this recording as there's no real atmosphere established and the songs feel as bare bones as possible through much of the recording.
In the end, there's good 8-bit renditions of Metal songs, and then there's not. Sadly, this album is composed of the latter. The music is very monotone. While there's a strong difference between the drumming and guitars in this form of music, a lot of times it just feels like the same sounding beeps from one track to another. There's nothing really exciting or unique about these track either, and instead often just sounds like humming you woould hear in an MRI machine or something like that, ultimately just leading to a migraine. Yeah, the album has some positive moments, like "ED-209" and some passages of songs like the guitar solo on "Behaver" or any track that has a solo really, but in the end the 8-bit intreptations sound generic and don't work out well. As a novetly release, it's interesting, and clearly a collectable piece, but outside of the fact that this plays to the more hardcore gaming Metal fan, there's no real reason to go crazy to find a copy of it.
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