For once this will actually be a reasonably short review. There isn’t much to say here as Avenger Of Blood is as straight-forward as they come. Hailing from the United States the band released two demos early this decade and released their one and only full-length (thus far) entitled Complete Annihilation in 2005. The band plays a back to the basics style of Thrash Metal that borrows, actually, more like copies the Pleasure To Kill to Extreme Aggression era of Kreator with dash of early Slayer. The result is fun but leaves a bit to be desired.

The band obviously decided to emulate early Kreator in as many ways as possible. The music is extremely fast, only slowing down for a few mid-paced breaks on a few occasions. There is a ton of double bass, borderline blast beats, and actual blast beats found on here and the riffs remain constantly fast and in-your-face. The vocals are sung intermittently on practically every song and vocalist Eric does his best Mille impersonation throughout the entire CD. Mille is an awesome Thrash Metal singer, so copying his style isn’t necessarily a bad thing but then why not just listen to Kreator? I suppose it’s one thing to sound similar, but to sound almost exactly like him turns out to make Avenger Of Blood sound like a great cover band of Kreator than one who is heavily influenced by them. The production is raw and dirty, with a bit of distorted fuzz that fits the music perfectly, but once again emulates the early Kreator production jobs a little too much.

As mentioned all the songs are at a break-neck speed and I honestly found a good number of riffs to be completely killer and great examples of raging Thrash. The problem is many songs sound similar and the really fast riffs start to blend together. A plus is that in between a lot of riffs are short-lived but well-placed and well-played fast melodic leads. When the band does slow down (and slow is a relative term here) the riffs take on more of a Slayer or even early Sepultura mentality than Kreator, but it’s not enough for the music to take on a different identity than the one already indicated.

Overall Avenger Of Blood are a fun band to listen to for people who were or are still heavily into the more extreme side of Thrash Metal such as early Kreator, Sepultura, Destruction, Slayer etc. Other bands have done this type of Thrash tribute before, such as Hypnosia, but they blended multiple Thrash bands equally into a new, even more aggressive sound, where as Avenger Of Blood just re-hash the oldies, sort to speak. Since this style isn’t even played anymore by any of the bands that created it (with the wonderful exception of Destruction) perhaps lends greater credibility to the bands sound. I for one can certainly see a lot of talent and honest energy in the band that made me head-bang out of control on more than one occassion, but when the music sounds so similar to legitimate classic CDs there isn’t anything here that would make me listen this release over Pleasure To Kill, Beneath The Remains, or Hell Awaits, and that speaks more about the music than anything.