Perseverance; In a time where acts need to make traction within 1-3 years or risk moving on, Germany’s speed/thrash act Holy Moses should be a case study in plowing onward if the belief in your style and songwriting is substantive. They recorded eight demos/ rehearsal tapes from 1980-1986 before putting out their first album Queen of Siam. They broke up in 1994 after seven studio albums, only to return in 2000 on the live front and since 2001 on the recording front. Redefined Mayhem is their 11th full length, their first studio recording in six years following a 30th anniversary retrospective that probably served as a re-introduction for many.
The break has done the quartet a lot of good – as I feel the material on here is some of the strongest I’ve heard in the band’s career. Listen to the precise stop/ start timing and chunky triplets that fuel “Process of Projection” or the Forbidden-like nuances on the locomotive “Triggered” to know Holy Moses isn’t messing around in straightforward, conventional speed/ thrash. Beyond the fact that Sabina Classen is subterranean in terms of her caustic growls and screams that rival the brutality and viciousness of most males in thrash, adding some of the eeriness that makes King Diamond or Lizzy Borden special as well.
The band isn’t stuck in one gear – they appear just as comfortable laying down a few mid-tempo anthems such as the militant “Undead Dogs” or the jagged “Delusion” that could fit well on any latter day U.D.O. album. The newest member of the band guitarist Peter Geltat deserves a lot of credit for mixing up standard heads down thrash and speed riffs with a lot of atmospheric clean parts and proper melodic lead break instincts. Most will prefer his stair step tricks and licks for “Liar”, but I equally approve of the calmer, restrained sections of another highlight “One Step Ahead of Death”.
If you didn’t enjoy some of the lengthier epics or rawer, low budget production values of 2008’s Agony of Death, I believe Redefined Mayhem could win you back into the Holy Moses camp. Who says the old guard can’t survive in 2014? Not this guy… possibly the comeback of the year.
Matt Coe, HMS
Older reviews