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Chemikiller: Evilspeak
by ©Scarlet Metal  & www.whoresofchaos.com
January 26, 2007

Chemikiller is a blakk thrash rampage! Harking back to the days of olde dark glory, these badboys show us how it’s done down in Delaware!! Heavy on the blakk n’roll and doom metal delivered with arrogant Satanic swagger and a serious punk sneer. Motörhead meets Venom meets Celtic Frost meets Bathory: Ramrod’s guitar work is just sick! Riffs range from superheavy to a Rhoadsesque fluidity. Vox is battery acid corroded killer!! and was immediately added to my list of fav’s of this genre which includes the likes of Cronos, Von, Tom G.Warrior, Pat Lind, Mille Petrozza, Nocturno Culto and Fenriz to mention a few. Powershift into fifth with the pedal to the metal!! ‘Full Metal Jacket’ takes no prisoners and will have most shouting “One Nation Under Satan!” before speeding off into hell on a custom Harley chopper! Another highlight is the guitar solo of Spider Queen. In the doom saturated groove of this creepy number, axeman Ryan is reminiscent at times of protometal ‘BBC Sessions Live’ era Jimmy Page. ‘Knee Deep’ is an excellent slab of blakkened thrash metal with a slight death metal flavor to the guitar solos. The wrath of ‘Stronger Than God’ has a serrated hardcore punk edge rage to the vocals and lyrics with some interluding that takes on a rather heavy metal vibe. My favorite: The retro bell tolls and ‘Devil’s Reign’ ignites the nightsky with a “Hear ye hear ye!” summoning Satan’s most faithful! At full throttle the guitar solo burns rubber as it slides into the sickest of spins, the kind you never want to come out of, keep a hand free to hit repeat! Lyrically this is also my fav track as it evokes the best of old school blakk n’roll imagery. ‘Enemy of Christ’ is a hard driven doom thrash classic with the vocals a bit more eroded, distorted and disintegrated into the other components giving an authentic 80’s feel. ‘Burned At The Stake’ is another awesome throwback to the day, although the lyrics are a bit more over the top gore than I personally care for. “Hammer Crushing Death’ is superbly stained with doomstonerrock sludge elements of Black Sabbath (circa 1968) type protometal. Overall, there really isn’t a bad track on this cd. The guitars are smokin’ all the way and both Ramrod’s vox and compositional skills are consistent throughout. Sidenote: although Chemilkiller’s first release was back in 2001, Ramrod’s first descent into the blakkness was with Defcon circa 1986. All that being said, he’s got to be one of the most talented and prolific guitarist/vocalists in the underground today. In a perfect world, Chemikiller would not be placed on the backburner, as per their recent News announcement. Hopefully ‘the corpse’ is exhumed at some point.

http://www.myspace.com/chemikiller