The veteran San Francisco Bay Area thrash metal legends' tenth studio album is also their first long-layer to feature the singing/screaming talents of
Steve "Zetro" Souza
since 2004's
Tempo of the Damned
--
Rob Dukes
, who handled vocal duties on the band's four prior outings, split with the group in the summer of 2014. Band and ex/current/deceased lead singer acrimony aside, the 11- track
Blood In, Blood Out
mostly crushes it, offering up a pulverizing set of textbook thrash-induced mayhem that somehow manages to sound both classic and vital. The band tosses a red herring into the pit with the electro-stomp intro to opener "Black 13," but it doesn't take long for guitarists
Gary Holt
and
Lee Altus
to unleash a barrage of staccato riffage that, like a perfectly calculated headshot, effectively drenches the listener in assorted bits of viscera. Elsewhere,
Metallica
's
Kirk Hammet
returns to the fold for a guest spot on the particularly crunchy "Salt the Wound," the relentless "Collateral Damage" arrives via a malevolently dissonant descending run that eventually morphs into the scaly backbone of the song, and the insidious title track, with its pit-antagonizing shout-out to late vocalist
Paul Baloff
("We wrote the book so you better know the plot/new breed, old creed, let's see what you brought"), all succeed via their obvious disdain for whether or not anybody actually gives a sh*t. For all its excess (some tracks definitely overstay their welcome),
, much like
Cannibal Corpse
's 2014 offering
Skeletal Domain
, sounds remarkably dialed-in for a band so long in the tooth, and while it doesn't break any new ground for the stalwart rockers, it certainly does little to tarnish their reputation as thrash royalty. ~ James Christopher Monger