While I still find myself coming back to the world of thrash over time, I cannot help but be disappointed with how rarely the sound is able to deliver on the vast potential that’s still to be had should the right talent come around. Much like stoner rock or straight heavy metal, you can still tread over that familiar territory without greatly changing the sound as we’ve come to know it and still manage to inject personality and passion into the sound. Yet, you need the right circumstances from the right act to bring it all together. Scholar of Sin is most certainly the right act for thrash.
Depending on who you ask, thrash is a sound that has been done virtually do exhaustion with it being little more than a flavor enhancer for other styles of extreme metal or little more than a note to let listeners know the material in question is faster than typical. Personally, despite my jaded experience with the style in recent years, I would viciously disagree. Anything can be possible when dealing with a scene as resilient as this. Sometimes, you need only to bide your time and wait for the right circumstances to come before you, and I firmly think Scholar of Sin is the reward for that patience. A singularly potent display of thrash metal the likes of which can be seen as a by-the-book creation of the genre, the spirit and passion that goes on throughout every single minute of this creation is precisely what many of us are looking for in the sound despite not many able to bring everything together in the proper proportions. An apocalyptic background with themes of war and the misdeeds of humanity? Scholar of Sin certainly has a fair understanding of thrash with what’s only their first album, but it’s in the intoxicating riffs and melody laced between the crossover tendencies of the work where “Omen of the End” shines brilliantly. It’s safe to say that “Omen of the End” does not rock the boat when it comes to what the record brings to the table, but it’s in honest and passionate delivery that one cannot help but gravitate towards.
This is but the first big step for Scholar of Sin and far from anything different from what much of the sound has been doing for years, but there’s something particularly interesting about “Omen of the End” that I can’t quite put my finger on as to why I like it so much. Whatever it is, I cannot help but enjoy it greatly such that this record is an absolute treat from beginning to end.
LISTEN to “Omen of the End” on Bandcamp here.
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