It’s hard to believe we’re almost twenty-five years into the thrashaissance that started in the early aughts, when bands like Warbringer, Evile, Bonded by Blood, and Municipal Waste hit the scene to breathe new life into a genre that had gone stale. Tons of new bands have formed over that period in an attempt to ride the wave of the revival, including Danish trio Destabilizer. Whiplashed into form in 2020, and after independently releasing two EPs, Destabilizer partnered with Horror Pain Gore Death Productions to release its debut album, Violence is the Answer, in 2023. Fast forward two years, and Destabilizer, in cooperation with new label Iron Shield Records, is ready to shred an unsuspecting public with its sophomore effort, Monopoly on Violence. So, should you rummage through the closet and dust off those skinny jeans, white high tops, and that favorite patch-covered denim vest? Let’s toss some cheap beers in a cooler, pop the bills of our painter’s caps, and head to the skate park to find out.
Nailing the aesthetic on the wrapper—see the pointy logo and colorful comic-book cover art?—the thrash inside Destabilizer‘s Monopoly on Violence is as straightforward as it gets. Devotees of Bonded by Blood and Pleasures of the Flesh era Exodus will have an excellent idea of what to expect from Destabilizer‘s sound, even though the production here is a bit slicker. Niels Sonne does an admirable job holding down all guitar duties, dropping riffs of shredding speed (“Rampage”) and mid-paced chuggery (“Monopoly on Violence”) with equal skill. In true thrash fashion, Kenneth Terkelsen’s kit work provides enough fabulous disaster to keep things recklessly unhinged without letting them go completely off the rails, while Thomas Haxen’s (Horned Almighty) beer bottle bass work, full of effervescent bubbles and plops that lay nicely in Quentin Nicollet’s mix, rounds out Destabilizer‘s rhythm section.
Monopoly on Violence by Destabilizer
With all this stock-in-trade musicality, the vocal performances stand out most on Monopoly on Violence. A shared responsibility between Haxen and Terkelsen—the former taking the lead and the latter taking backup—the two create a thrashnicolor dream coat of vocal variability. Mainly miming the quirky deliveries of Vio-Lence‘s Sean Killian and Exodus‘ Paul Baloff1, Haxen’s approach adds maniacal energy to tracks like “Easy Prey” and “Pacific Holocaust,” which even contains whiffs of the late, great Dave Brockie2 from Gwar in its nuance. Add to that the occasional death growls and full-on gang shouts that prowl the nooks and crannies of tracks like “Kommander” or “Thrash or Fuck Off,” and Destabilizer manage to inject enough nostalgic mist into the midst of Monopoly on Violence to keep me engaged.
Destabilizer is in no way attempting to reinvent the steel here, however, and while holding a mirror up to the eighties thrash masters of old has always been a hallmark of the retro movement, it often leads to drop-in-the-bucket feelings of “meh.” With its mostly stock riffing and, at times, lyrical juvenility—”Kommander”‘s chuckle-inducing ‘Cuffed up tightly / Disarray I don’t take lightly / Dislocated shoulder / Anarchists getting bolder’ lyric a case in point—Monopoly on Violence doesn’t do anything to escalate itself into “must listen” territory. Combine these points with some atmospheric-via-brie synth intros (“Easy Prey,” “Kommander”), and you’re left with an album that is too explicitly catered, alienating what might have been a more discerning thrash-hungry crowd by producing nothing more than an exercise in thrash flash tattoo art.
Destabilizer doesn’t suck. Monopoly on Violence isn’t terrible. Depending on when you and your buddies start cracking beers, this album will have your sober friends nodding and your drunken buds bobbing. But when the hangover wears off, you’ll be left with some run-of-the-mill thrash metal. There is fun to be had, but it is mostly fleeting, which makes it interesting how difficult waffling over a simple half-point can be when trying to land on an album’s score. I’ve spent more time wrestling that fact with Destabilizer than I should have, but this is where I landed. Agree or disagree, though, it’s my review, so “Thrash or Fuck Off.”
Rating: 2.5/5.0
DR: 9 | Format Reviewed: 320 kbps mp3
Label: Iron Shield Records
Websites: destabilizer.bandcamp.com | facebook.com/destabilizerDK
Releases Worldwide: January 17th, 2025
The post Destabilizer – Monopoly on Violence Review appeared first on Angry Metal Guy.
