Artist: Metal Church
   Title: This Present Wasteland
   Label: SPV Records

Like a fair number of bands to come out of the eighties Metal scene Seattle’s Metal Church have seen their fair share of line-up changes over the years, with singers coming and going and coming again and going again, guitarists following suit with the only constant in the band is founding member Kurdt Vanderhoof, who himself even left the band and rejoined back in 1998.

But since 2003 the band has been fronted by Far Cry vocalist Ronny Munroe, who has cemented the name Metal Church forever in the anoles of the Encyclopaedia Rocksonica with his powerful and intense vocals style and along with the guitars of Kurdt Vanderhoof and Rick Van Zandt, the bass of Steve Unger and the drumming of Jeff Plate, the band have returned with their monstrous new opus ‘The Present Wasteland’.

Although the band have been labelled with the Thrash Metal moniker for most of their career this album is far beyond Thrash this is a Heavy Metal album of the highest calibre a guitar fuelled monster that takes the band to new heights in my estimation.

The album gets underway with ‘In Company Of Sorrow’ and its thumping metal all the way as the Metal Church opens its doors to its follows once more with a blistering opens full of heady bass tones and a streaming guitar sections all matched in splendour with Munroe’s fine metal pipes.

And this superb slice of Melodic guitar fuelled Thrash Metal is continued with the excellent ‘Perfect Crime’, as Munroe once again shines as a powerhouse vocal talent whilst Vanderhoof and Van Zandt rip up a storm.

‘Deeds Of A Dead Soul’ is pure Power Metal with a haunting intro leading the way to some streaming guitars from the guitar duo.  To be honest this is what I was expecting from Priest's Nostradameus album, only that album failed to impress except for a few tracks.

It's metal all the way with the rampant ‘Meet Your Maker’ and the quite sublime metal of ‘Monster’, another riff filled spectacular from the band and is one of my favourites off the album.

The storming metal just oozes out of every track on this album as things continue to impress with ‘Crawling To Extinction’, another heavily bass infused track, the magical tones of ‘War Never One’, which is an anthemic as a metal track you will hear this year.

It's streaming metal guitars aloft with the fast and furious ‘Mass Hysteria’ and the riff filled ‘Breathe Again’, both real metal masterpieces.

The album comes to its frantic close with electrifying ‘Congregation’, which starts off from humble beginnings but soon builds into a mass of twin guitar licks and thumping rhythms, with the icing on the cake being the vocals of Munroe which cascade above everything else in a mass of sheer power.

If you're into guitar filled metal which mixes the likes of Priest and Iced Earth together in one wonderful metal package, then you can't go far wrong with this album.  Ignore the Thrash Metal tag and take a chance on this album, you won't be disappointed.

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