Pessimist
Death From Above

They do not have the most optimistic of band names this German quintet, neither do they have an exciting cover artwork. It looks like any thrash metal album, especially like something from more well-known countrymen of Sodom and it is not only the artwork that reminds of those. It is something of war, of violence, of hate, a teutonic thrash metal album it is said. It is the second album of the band, though they have a couple of demos listed as well so they are not completely infants of the genre, but do they do enough to peak the interest of the seasoned fans who has heard most of it before? It certainly doesn’t look that way.

The music is a bit of a sonic assault, heavy thrash metal with lots of attitude and energy. Not very original, I can think of ten-fifteen very similar bands at this instant. The vocalist is quite typical of the genre, he suits the nine songs quite well. The production is fairly strong, modern yet with a flair for the old school. Nothing very original there either. Well made music that’s for certain, they have energy and power but maybe not that much in terms of originality. It is not very varied either, the songs are quite similar all the way through.

Overall I think it sounds like a rather good thrash metal album, it is aggressive and heavy as well as powerful and with authority. At the same time it is like the band is assaulting a solid wall and never really making any progress and then comes the counter move from the opponent which is an airstrike. Hence the name. Thing is though that it is a good album but it has a big problem which is the opposition within the genre, there are already many established bands that are at least as good, some that are stronger and all of them came before. This begs for the inevitable question, why this before Sodom for instance? It is about as good but the stuff from Sodom and Sodom themselves are established entities which Pessimist is not. Had they came at the same time as the legends they probably could have been legends, now they are just copying from the rulebook already set by said legends so nothing new here. They do follow the rules well and I cannot really complain about the quality as it is a decent listen but other stuff is better and has the advantage of having done it before.

It is a case of “haven’t we been here before” this album, it is fine and a good listen for anyone liking aggressive thrash metal. It just lacks originality, this makes it a rather unoriginal and rather decent album. Still, it is one that will not go down in history as it is not really at that level so I would say that anyone who like thrash metal will most likely find this album good. I kind of like thrash metal but I have heard this stuff earlier and not even the very strong ending can change that fact that it feels like I’ve heard it before even though I haven’t.

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