Malicide
Malicide
(independent release)
Released: 7/30/22
Version Reviewed: Digital promo
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1 – Slow Suicide
2 – Angel of Mercy
3 – Let’s Start the Countdown
4 – Bullet to the Face
5 – Time to Make ‘Em Pay
6 – Devil’s Evolution
7 – One More Shot
8 – Hate Controls Your Fist
9 – We Spill Your Blood
10 – Inhume the Screams
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Malicide’s self-titled debut is an album that, wisely, bucked convention in several key areas and came out as an interesting release that takes elements of several genres and merges it into a hook-heavy, groove-laden thrash-minded metal release that doesn’t fall into any particular billing.
Thrash has a habit of painting itself into a corner, part of it is by its own design. For decades, the tempo, percussive structure, riffcraft, vocal patterns, and general structuring have largely remained unchanged. There’s positives and negatives to this. Where other genres and offshoots of the metal canon have the ability to experiment largely at their leisure, genres such as thrash and speed metal are largely expected to adhere to a certain signature sound of sorts. Malicide draws from certain elements of thrash while not immersing or becoming a pure thrash band in the process.
These thrash elements are then combined with more traditional heavy metal elements, including staggering amounts of hook-heavy groove-orientation to create a sonic blend that is uniquely their own; not quite mainstream, not quite underground, but accessible, heavy, waiting to be discovered. Malicide write metal you expect to hear on festival billings. It’s not ‘get drunk and puke on your crotch’ thrash-style music, its ‘feed your forearm to a stranger’s face’-type music with mosh sensibility. It’s one step under mainstream, it lacks the pretentious ‘dipshit’ nature you expect from mainstream music, this isn’t material that was slapped together by tired people who’ve already been paid and have already seen their fair share, this was put together by musicians that serious about their craft. If they weren’t serious about their craft, they could have gone in and palm-muted their way in 4/4 time at 130+ bpm, played a couple solos, yelled into the mic, nailed some double-bass, and recorded every song that way. This isn’t the case here.
‘Slow Suicide’ opens the album with a mid-tempo Annihilator-style main riff that is flanked with a series of accent details amongst the verse/chorus/verse structure. Amongst the details are accompaniment melodies and harmonies, flourishes of percussive double-bass stutter steps, clean vocal passages, a bridge in the middle of the track that builds into an extended solo that feeds back into the central narrative before returning to the chorus. This is hook-heavy songwriting designed for memorability.
‘Angel of Mercy’ is built with the same concepts in mind, but with much more clean vocals in play, and drummer Shawn Roberts’ double-bass hammering down during the verse sections.
From this point forward, however, the band kicks things up a notch in terms of intensity. On tracks like ‘Let’s Start the Countdown,’ purer thrash elements shine through via Megadeth-ian vocal delivery during verses while a brutal chorus delivery of double-bass and shouted gang-style vocals offer stark contrast and dissonance to change the entire feel of the song. Couple that with the breakdown towards the beginning closing third of the song and you have the making of a mosh-ready staple.
Continuing the heavy elements is ‘Bullet to the Face,’ which features guitarist/vocalist Michael Silas delivering another change in vocal pattern approach by going with a more direct shouting style. At this point in Malicide, Silas has displayed no less than three different strong approaches to his vocal attack by the fourth song, marking his talents as a multi-faceted frontman.
‘Time to Make ‘Em Pay’ is a short number which opens with bassist Mike Damian’s punchy bass lines followed by a ripping lead delivered by Silas. Gang-vocals support the song’s chorus and leads propel the song forward into a nasty breakdown that sets up one final conjunction of chorus and solo.
‘Devil’s Evolution’ could easily pass as an early 1990’s thrash piece with its double-bass pacing, vocal patterns, and verse chord progression and ‘One More Shot’ vaults itself forward as an example of prime groove metal violence, even with a slight touch of modern metalcore.
‘Hate Controls Your Fist’ shifts gears back to the sensibility to that of ‘Angel of Mercy’ and ‘Slow Suicide,’ less thrash and less heavy hitting, more progressive and more rock-oriented.
‘We Spill Your Blood’ is the final proper track on Malicide and picks up the pace one last time with groove metal orientation. Peppered throughout the early part of the track are blistering guitar solos, with the middle of the track opening up for some harmonization and more soloing before returning to the central narrative and closing on the chorus. There’s a lot of heavy lifting in terms of guitar work here.
The final track is an instrumental closer, ‘Inhume the Screams,’ which is driven by a short somber primary melody flanked by a huge power progression that’s closed by a piano melody.
Malicide demonstrate a lot of skill for an independent release. Between the multi-faceted vocal attack, the constant barrage of leads, and dogpiling of riffs, there is a lot to unpack across multiple listens. If groove-infused thrash-minded heavy metal is your thing, there’s absolutely no reason to not give this a chance. Sometimes, the best stuff is the unsigned stuff.
Label: (independent)
Band: Malicide
-AJK
apanthropy 
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