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This is the debut album from Comaniac, a Thrash band from Switzerland of all places. I am pleased to see they are much more in the ‘retro’ than the ‘modern’ thrash styles, but that is a place to start, not a final judgment. Comaniac are very much influenced by the Bay Area masters of the old days like Exodus and Death Angel, though the vocals of guitarist Jonas Schmidt are much more in line with Baloff than Osegueda. They have a good guitar sound with some meat on it, and they play with a degree of proficiency and musicality unknown to many of the old-school bands. The band is tight and polished, and the recording is solid.

The real problem here is that the band does not really have any first-rate riffs, and even their good riffs are too slow. This is Thrash - I want some fucking speed going on here - but too much of this is at a bouncier, almost NWOBHM kind of pace. The songwriting is so-so, with good, solid underpinnings but not much flash or inspiration. This is workmanlike, but it never really gets going. For a debut this has a lot of polish and shows a band with potential, but they don’t come up with any really killer songs, and too much of this is too slow and too restrained. Passable.