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Bütcher is a Belgian band that has zeroed in on the '80s stripe of thrash often referred to as speed metal. It's a subgenre that wasn't as clearly defined as some of the others, so to give you some sense of what the band's second album, 666 Goats Carry My Chariot, sounds like take the balls out speed and ferocity of Nuclear Assault and combine it with the unhinged wails of a failed cloning experiment using DNA from Dan Beehler mixed with King Diamond singing about metal, Vikings and plain old evil shit and you'll have a good starting point. While they mainly play at breakneck speed, Bütcher slow things down on occasion, like the intro ("Inauguration of Steele") and the acoustic outro ("Exaltation of Sulphur"), showing they aren't simply about playing fast enough to make smoke rise from their guitars. They also show a little variety in their songwriting with the title track which uses a slower tempo and more open song structure to achieve a creepy and epic atmosphere that evokes mid-period Bathory. However, it's the hellish tornado of riffing on tracks like "Iron Bitch" where this band shines.

There is a lot of speed and black/thrash out there and certainly bands that do it better, but with 666 Goats Carry My Chariot, Bütcher is a name that should be mentioned in the same breath as BAT, Black Mass, Midnight, etc.