Vicious Rumors
Concussion Protocol
(Steamhammer / SPV)
California’s Vicious Rumors have been going strong since 1979 and this twelfth full-length release sees them showing no surefire signs of stopping. Even though the band’s last effort, Electric Punishment (2013) only managed to receive a 60% over at Metal Archives from literally one dude, I actually dug it quite a bit and thought it mixed power and thrash metal together rather nicely. But there was only one song that really stood out among the others on that disc, which was namely it’s opener “I Am The Gun.” On this record however, I’m not only hearing hard-hitting chorus lines from returning frontman Nick Holleman – I’m also hearing more shred than I can possibly handle from longtime guitarist Geoff Thorpe. Just from hearing the licks alone, you can tell that Thorpe is really putting his all into this, as songs like “Chasing The Priest,” “Victims Of A Digital World,” and “Bastards” swell with all the might and power that we’d expect from a power/thrash disc. Concussion Protocol sounds like a power/thrash effort with an 80s flair, albeit doubled up with enough groove riffs to keep you banging your head throughout the entire performance. If you love the kind of record where nearly eighty to ninety percent of the performance is dedicated to guitar noodling, then you’re definitely going to find something here. Adding to that is the staying power of the songs themselves, which actually keep me singing along rather than waiting for a hook to finally appear. These are the kind of tracks that work well both for the band and their reputation as a veteran act, showing that even though they’ve been around for over thirty years, they’ve still got it. If you liked the band before, you’re still going to like them now. Nothing has changed, there’s no core, melodic cleans or… well, there is one surprise here that I didn’t expect and I’ll get to that in a minute. But as far as the first ten tracks are considered, it is definitely business as usual with absolutely no bells or whistles. If you wanted a mix of power, thrash and groove, then that’s exactly what you’re getting.
Now that that’s out of the way, let me talk a little about the surprise. You see, after the band thrash and pound their way through ten relatively solid cuts, we get a strange surprise in “Life For A Life.” This is the album’s closing note, but it would have probably been better left as a bonus track or something. So what did Vicious Rumors do? Well, they kind of went Goth. Yeah, you read that right. Droning riffs with a little bit of a death growls and an added Dracula (or perhaps Peter Steele) tone on the vocals is exactly what what we’re getting here. Yet they oddly sort of try to mix this Goth with thrash. Yeah, you read that right as well. The byproduct is something that I would have never expected from these guys and to be honest, I kind of scratched my head a little bit when I first encountered it. It left this reviewer wondering if I was even listening to the same band, or if my MP3 player accidentally scooped up a different track from another album and added it to the list. I’m really not sure what Vicious Rumors fans are going to think of an experiment like this one, but I’d certainly consider it an interesting idea. After all of that classic power/thrash, something like this can come across like something of an unexpected sucker punch. It would be similar to listening to a band like The Vision Bleak as they pulled out a power/thrash number at the end of their album.
At the end of the day, I can’t say that Vicious Rumors’ fans are going to be upset with this one. It sticks around a bit longer than the previous disc did and even offers something that I’d find completely new and uncharted for an act of this nature. Concussion Protocol won’t revolutionize the genre, but it’s still a relatively good disc in it’s own right. I’m happy with it, which is reason enough to give it a listen.
Purchase Concussion Protocol here: Amazon | iTunes
