Maximum Metal Rating Legend

Los Sin Nombre Blind Leading Blind Company: Vicisolum Productions Release: 2009 Genre: Thrash Reviewer: EC

Meat-train of aggression

If I had a long car ride to commit my first homicide I would listen to Los Sin Nombre to pass the miles. Seriously. This Swedish act is absolutely brutal, shaking-in-my-bone-marrow brutal, a pulverizing attack that rivets double bass bursts and cements a sledge of stomp riffs and Euro melodic fury. The band has released their debut album for the native Vicisolum Productions entitled "Blind Leading Blind". Fans of polished production standards should find plenty to like about the group's choice here, drums and bass way up front with vocals and guitars stretched to the Entombed/Swedish death metal sound made famous today by The Haunted.

"Ashes To Ashes" screams out of the gates with the instant comparison to Soilwork's "Chainheart Machine-Steelbath Suicide" era. Vocals or much in line with metalcore grunts and screams, mixing up nicely again with The Haunted or Construcdead. The production is just mammoth (who produced this?) and the song has some speed crossed up with wallop groove and very little lead work. The album really shows off this kind of construction through most of "Blind Leading Blind", highlights being the noisy and cannon-fire double bass on the title track and the abrasive "Our Daily Bread". Vocals mix up a bit on "Bleed" almost doing a Darkane/Mnemic synthetic voiceover that adds some dynamics to an otherwise meat-train of aggression. Fans of modern In Flames should tend to like the watery metal-ballad "Breaking Silence" and the shovel-headed doom riffage on "Enemy" (see acoustic passage ala "Come Clarity"). The group even throws in an instrumental.

Bottom Line - For fans of The Haunted, older Darkane, early Soilwork, mid-era Arch Enemy and maybe today's Throwdowns.