It’s always a pleasure to come across new bands that ply the art of Thrash, after the scourge of Metalcore reduced the once proud genre to a shadow of its former self. Space Eater, hailing from Serbia and taking its name from the Gamma Ray song, once had a live performance interrupted by the police due to violent moshing, so clearly the band is doing something right! Taking a more melodic route than the harsher likes of Dekapitator, there’s clearly a lot of influence from the American school of Thrash, particularly the likes of Heathen and early Testament. Merciful Angel, the band’s debut full-length, could have come straight from the late eighties in many respects, despite the polished sound.

There’s little to complain about. Stanislav and Nemanja are more than decent guitarists, cranking out the riffs and solos with skill and passion, whilst vocalist Bošco can do an uncanny Bruce Dickinson impersonation. Pretty much every song apart from the intro is killer, with some great choruses and melodic hooks in there. It’s hard to pick standout tracks, not because the album’s repetitive, but because each song has something to recommend it by, whether it’s the likes of Overkill’s catchiness or Operaphobia’s fun lyrics, detailing the true horror that is fat women screaming. Lyrics generally are pretty good – not to put the band down in any way, but bad English in lyrics is a typical hazard in Metal, and you could understand if the band made any huge errors, but there’s nothing to complain about in that respect here.

Even the bass is clearly audible! Serbian Metal is rare enough, decent Serbian Thrash especially so, and good Metal is always worth nurturing. No doubt seasoned Thrashers have heard it all before, but this presents, at worst, forty minutes’ worth of enjoyable headbanging. Newcomers, veterans, all should be checking this band out.