by: Navjot Kaur Sobti
“The path to salvation is an excuse for aberrations:”
A warm welcoming note on the packaging of Nuclear’s Jehovirus. You could say I was further pleased to see that this pack of carnivorously misanthropic dudes hail from Chile: the cradle to some blisteringly anarchic and primitively brutal thrash. That snarky grin seemed about glued liked plaster to the corpse when the album opened with the epic bass lines and emotive riffs of “Belligerence.” Expecting some kind of explosion of tumultuous death metal sound (a clever but familiar pattern I may attribute to some of my favorite Suffocation or Hate Eternal records), I was met instead with such anthemic calls to blood-boiling thrash as “feel distrust, infect your mind, prepare bloodshed.”
Bridging into an all the more epic opening of “Criminal Solicitation,” for those of you anti-theists, vocalist Matias Leonicio is sure to provide a sufficient Nietzsche-ian dosage of God-loathing, organized religion crucifying criticism, so too hatred of the sheep born of the world he not too lovingly refers to as “a paradise of depravation.” “Acts of Depravity” displays the chops of this six-piece, with a smooth interplay between both guitarists and a gnarly solo to top off the already primal drumbeats.
There’s something to be said about the injections of melodic, near Gothenburg instrumentals in between the Exodus meets Slayer-esque thrash foundations of the tracks on this record; if there’s a stereotype that thrash has got to be a repetitive, mindless loop of 2-3 catchy riffs, testosterone anarchic-fueled lyrics, and the occasional solo, Nuclear breaks it seamlessly. Speaking of Slayer, if you’re looking for a track that screams out the traditional fury of our beloved LA-based and slightly balding legends, “Asphyxia” is your go-to. In the midst of the fury, there’s an upbeat energy to the track, that makes it palpable that in the midst of churning out the tunes, this is a band that knows their metal history, and was damn proud to be in the studio: contributing to its infamy with this 9-track exhumation of all things passionately and irrefutably metal.
