Suicide Watch – Thrashing Like It’s 1986 – EP Review

UK thrashers Suicide Watch feel the need, the need for thrashing speed and these aggressive muthafuckers are indeed thrashing like it’s 1986, with an EP which rewinds the clock back to the greatest year in thrash history!

A double A-Side, 7 track EP, Thrashing Like It’s 1986 is a blast from start to finish, looking back to the golden age of thrash with a fondness and sense of nostalgia which proves itself to be ridiculously addictive.

Too young to remember 1986?

Suicide Watch will still make you believe you were there, living and breathing the moment when Slayer’s Reign In Blood, Metallica’s Master Of Puppets, Dark Angel’s Darkness Descends, Nuclear Assault’s Game Over, Kreator’s Pleasure To Kill, Megadeth’s Peace Sells…But Who’s Buying?, Flotsam And Jetsam’s Doomsday For The Deceiver, Metal Church’s The Dark and Destruction’s Eternal Devastation first set off a nuclear explosion of thrash supremacy!

Kicking off with the relatively subdued “Prelude To Extinction”, Suicide Watch channel the almighty Annihilator with an instrumental intro which betrays the ferocity to come. That’s right, it all kicks off when the title track detonates! A lightning-fast tribute to everything that made 80’s thrash so damn great, the bulk of “Thrashing Like It’s 1986” was actually written in 1986 but not recorded until now, ultimately adding a level of authenticity missing from the majority of old-school thrash delivered by today’s glut of nostalgia lovin’ bands.

“Thrashing Like It’s 1986” may be the ‘big dog’ here but “Destroy Master” is no slouch either, a mid-tempo chug-fest which bulldozes its way through your innards. Nuclear Assault-esque in nature, this back to basics track doesn’t fuck about; with thrash metal riffs, brutal drumming and almost hardcore-esque hollering satisfying those hungry for a little thrash brutality.

Officially closing with “Mass, Extinction, Event.”, this outro brings a dark, moody, delicately delivered finish to the EP. To be fair, the remaining tracks are a bonus, demo’s which are of good quality and offer some fun but are hardly essential. However, Thrashing Like It’s 1986‘s 4 tracks proper equate to rip-roaring thrash of the highest order!

This suicide crew deliver old-school thrash with 100% conviction, and somehow, Suicide Watch have managed to make 1986 feel like yesterday! 8/10