I must admit, after being really impressed last time, my initial reaction here was “oof.” The last was pretty, subtle, layered with hidden details, and referential yet retaining its own originality. This is much more immediate, heavily retro, and honestly, kinda ugly. I am of course talking about the album art. Compare the award-winning cover of Charlie Griffiths’ previous album Tiktaalika to the art on the newly rebranded Tiktaalika’s Gods of Pangaea. Album art is nothing if not an advertisement of the musical contents, so what does a cover from an 80s thrash band with some detailing referencing the previous record’s theming portend?
If you said “Gods of Pangaea will sound like an 80s thrash band with some light prog stylings from the previous record,” congratulations to both you and the artist1. This is explicitly an homage to the melodic end of 80s thrash and proto-thrash. The sound is exemplified by Peace Sells-era Megadeth, with some proggy influences a la Mercyful Fate. The riffs go chugga chugga twiddly twiddly and then there’s an even twiddlier guitar solo. The vocals, from a selection of talented guest vocalists, span melodic cleans, shouty thrash vocals, and some harsher styles.2 If you like that sort of thing, it’s done very well here and this album is for you. Griffiths is clearly having fun and it shows.
Gods of Pangaea (24-bit HD audio) by Tiktaalika
If you want to stand out from all the other retro bands, and the historical catalogs of all the bands you’re actually referencing, you need some sort of differentiating factor. Fellow purveyors of retro-styled tripe The Night Flight Orchestra have got away with it for so many albums through a mixture of exuberance, stellar songwriting, and developing an identity despite the references. On Gods of Pangaea, the mixture of vocalists works against Tiktaalika, making it difficult to claim any sort of identity. The result feels like a collection of covers of 80s B-sides nobody quite remembers. And while the songs are good, they’re not quite that good. In particular, the guitars dissolve into a primordial soup of thrash genre conventions. It colors so consistently within the lines it’s hard to pick standout riffs or even identify the songs from the guitar parts. The exception is highlight “The Forbidden Zone,” with a slower tempo and more of a driving, insistent feel to the riffs.
I mentioned last time that Griffiths is a really good vocal writer/director, and that’s still true here… to a point. The thrash influences have led to some of the singers (particularly Daniël de Jongh) aping Dave Mustaine’s style (“Tyrannicide”, “Give Up the Ghost”), and, look, I like Megadeth, but not for the vocals. When it’s good, though (“The Forbidden Zone,” “Mesozoic Mantras,” both with Vladimir Lalić), there are some excellent choruses. “Fault Lines” (with Rody Walker) is an odd example where, though his mixed and harsh vocals are technically very good, the majority of the song falls a bit flat… but the “suddenly I stand on hallowed ground, and I am waiting for the divine”3 chorus is by far the catchiest thing on the entire album.
Gods of Pangaea successfully does what it sets out to do. It sounds like Megadeth. The songs are good, and occasionally great. There are intensely catchy choruses. It sounds like the band are having fun. It’s an enjoyable listen; I just find it very hard to get excited about something so nakedly backward-looking. The thrash genre conventions in the guitar writing leave me unable to pick any favorite guitar moments, and that’s not a great look for a guitarist’s side project. It’s not rethrash in its most cliched form – there’s more melody and songcraft here than that – but it’s far closer than I’d like.
Rating: Mixed
DR: 6 | Format Reviewed: 320 kb/s mp3
Label: Inside Out Music
Websites: insideoutmusic.bandcamp.com | facebook.com/charlie.griffiths.guitarist
Releases Worldwide: March 14th, 2025
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