There are very few things that can make me feel like a kid again than a good classic move. I vividly remember constantly sitting really close in front of a television that’s older than I am, close enough to where I can feel the static from the screen, and being simply bewildered by whatever movie was on screen to keep my ass planted in one spot for more than five minutes. When there were giant monsters on the screen smashing buildings, nothing else mattered and the fact that the words didn’t match the mouths were the least of my worries. Oxygen Destroyer filled me with that very same nostalgia with their last album, and this time they’ve teamed up with VHS who helps deliver a devastating one-two punch of classic cinema class that hits all the right notes.

Just from that cover art alone, you should already have an idea of how awesome and ridiculous this split is. Across a scant nine-minute run time that other bands would struggle to make an impression within a situation like this, it’s with just two tracks for each of them that Oxygen Destroyer and VHS dominate their own corners of death-wreathed thrash metal in their own delightfully weird ways. Oxygen Destroyer brings the awesomely destructive power of the kaiju, namely my guy Gigan in this case, where there’s no sort of civilization left to rebuild as this quartet absolutely devastates. Both tracks are terribly quick to barely reach a total of four minutes within the confines of “Category III Kaiju” where, although in the spotlight for less than half the runtime of the split, leaves a crater where no life will crawl out of, not even Ghidorah. As for VHS, they were a new treat for me that I will definitely find myself crawling back to like a dumb group of teens to an abandoned cabin. This is such a voracious variant of death/thrash metal that compliments Oxygen Destroyer in the most perfect way that I could easily see these two touring together specifically to power through “Category III Kaiju” in a spontaneous pulse of destruction that the West Coast would take time to recover from. With riffs that don’t know when to quit, melodies that come in at the most opportune moments, and a tenacity that is simply scathing in its calmest moments, VHS’s contribution to this split are nothing short of tantalizing!

Thrash is a branch of metal that I find myself visiting not all that often just because it doesn’t interest me as much, and then we get shit like this! This split is a prime example of why I keep coming back as it’s vicious, it’s fun, and it’s got such talent that it just simply cannot be denied for even a second. Both Oxygen Destroyer and VHS have created material to be more than proud of, and I know for a fact that this is just the very smallest of hints as to the true capability of these city wreckers.

LISTEN to “Category III Kaiju” via YouTube here.

LISTEN to Oxygen Destroyer on Bandcamp here.

LIKE Oxygen Destroyer on Facebook here.

LISTEN to VHS on Bandcamp here.

LIKE VHS on Facebook here.