Trident - World Destruction
Regain Records
Blackened Death
10 songs (49:21)
Release year: 2010
Regain Records
Reviewed by Steve

Sure, imitation is the highest form of flattery, but when does adoration as emulation morph into theft or laziness? As a thrash fan first, most, and best, I really don’t have a problem with bands that are heavily influenced by their predecessors. If you love Reign in Blood, you don’t need another copy of Reign in Blood. However, there is a point at which a different band playing the exact same songs will sound different enough that fans of the original can appreciate “copies” as well. As with many things in life, there is a continuum at play. It is not a case of binaries or black & white. Hence, I can love a band like Havok while acknowledging they are near to the bare minimum of novelty required for differentiation from their forebears. Perhaps music is especially prone to this phenomenon. A recent, and excellent, post at Demolish Fanzine exposes the reappearance of what is essentially the same riff on many metal records over the course of the genre’s history. Then there is mash-up culture, as explored by David Shields' book Reality Hunger, which has generated intense debate in literary circles this year. These are murky waters, folks, and I offer no answers to your questions. What has happened in the case of Trident, though, is not influence or borrowing, but rather reusing. I have neither the resources nor the inclination to conduct the necessary reporting to ferret out the legalities, ethics, or motivations behind this occurrence. I will instead relate to you simply this fact: three of the songs on Trident’s debut album appeared on an eponymous 2008 release by a band called Deletion, of which Trident’s guitarist Johan Norman (ex-Dissection) was a member.

The above notwithstanding, World Destruction is an competent piece of blackened death metal. The album kicks off with a rather cheesy kettle drum / electronic segment of intro The Trident. This moves quickly, though, into a martial drumming pattern and some eerie guitar. The transition to the first proper track, Jaws of Satan, is jarring as the song breaks out with a maelstrom of blast beating. It’s a good song; the initial fury crystallizes into a simpler, calmer riff at the half way point and we are treated to an excellent solo before the conclusion. Unfortunately, as is all too often the case, the listener spends the rest of the album waiting for another track like it.

The vocal work of Tobias Sidegård (Necrophobic) leaves nothing to be desired. He employs pacing that fits the music very well and enunciates his lyrics a bit more than typical for this style. His delivery is impassioned and convincing. Likewise the drumming of Jonas Blom is at least up to the task here. He executes his blasts without flaw, finds space for choice fills, and taps the cymbals at opportune moments. The playing of Mr. Norman and Ewo Solvelius on guitar is similarly satisfactory. They know what they are doing and they do it well most of the time, if never in an inspiring manner.

Where the album fails is in its monotony. Several of the songs are just too long. They don’t have what it takes to stand up to prolonged examination and they begin to bleed into one another. Ultimately, what Trident give us is a collection of quality pieces which fail to congeal into anything special. Parts of World Destruction are as good as 75% of the subgenre, so you can do worse than cherry picking tracks like Jaws of Satan and Luciferian Call if you’re in the mood for blackened death, but it certainly doesn’t succeed as an album.

Ten tracks: an intro, an outro, an interlude, and three that have been recorded before by another band. I don’t think the world, even our little metal corner of it, needed this record. If Regain Records felt compelled to get some of this material out there, they should have released it as an E.P.

Killing Songs :
Jaws of Satan
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