The Day of the Beast
S/T

February 2009
Released: 2008, Canonical Hours Records
Rating: 4.0/5
Reviewer: Luxi Lahtinen

This vicious beast here in our hands was born in Hampton Roads, Virginia in 2005, and it was baptized with the name The Day of the Beast (a quite extraordinary name for a band indeed), featuring 5 lads whose purpose is to prove us that a strike of the beast isn´t something one should deal too lightly with.



The Day of the Beast add cleverly some of the ferociousness and rawness of black metal (ála old Immortal) with old school sounding thrash metal (old Kreator, Merciless, Defleshed, etc.), and the result is – just like so many other similar black/thrash-styled bands (Desaster, Deströyer 666 and so on) have already convinced us by a fair big amount of their own quality releases, simply killer, I must confess.



These guys are spitting more venom than your favorite poisonous snake hunting near by children´s playground, and it´s hard to resist liking them. Steve´s vocals are evil and pissed-off sounding, reminding me quite a bit of Mille´s (Kreator) vocal outburst when Mille was still young, wild and relentless (now he´s only wild and relentless, ha!). Both Eric and KC on guitars, bring the evilness back to guitar playing – churning out incredibly crisp and wicked riffs from their shredding machines, and overall proving to belong to this band like a big nose to your ugly head. Moreover, when every single piece in their tracks clicks style-wise with each other seamlessly, the band´s concept for slaying of this world is as ready as it could ever be.



From originality´s perspective, there´s nothing there in their stuff that couldn´t have been done before. The wheel has been invented several times already - and they know that, too. I guess that´s why these fine lads in The Day of the Beast have basically taken almost the safest road for their revengeful ride, straightened violently a couple of curves on it, and then thrown a couple of extra gallons of gasoline of their own malicious mixture from their canisters around it in order to give a bit hotter and more convincing impression about themselves for those people that dare to check them out.



The Day of the Beast deliver their goods admirably well on their debut full-length in terms of finely executed blackened thrash. They are definitely one of the best and bands coming out from this particular box in question nowadays - and I´m sure they´ll get just lots of love from the fans from Kreator to Immortal to D666, and so on. Just my 2 cents… ;o)