Available: May 30^th, 2014

Label: Violent Journey Records

Official websites:

www.witheria.com
www.facebook.com/witheria
www.violentjourneyrecords.com

contact@violentjourneyrecords.com

Witheria’s ‘Devastating Return’ is a bit of an interesting and perplexing album.  It is marked as a Finnish thrash album, which it is certainly is in many ways but as the album plays on the guitar players in the band have, what I feel, is a unique talent in how they mix in their riffs, melodies and arrange their songs.  What starts out as a straightforward thrash album turns out by the end to offer a very interesting listening experience.

As stated ‘Devastating Return’ begins as a riff heavy, brutal thrash album along the lines of say bands like Sodom or Toxic Holocaust.  The first stand out attribute you will notice is the razor cutting vocals of Tuberculosis which fits in nicely for an extreme thrash metal band.  However after the first four or so songs are done it almost seems the music takes on another life and shifts from harsh thrash metal riffs to showcasing some very impressive and unique guitar work from guitarists Markus and Lappis.

You will be treated to some very sophisticated guitar work and harmonies that sound really clean for a thrash band but also what struck me was just how the players arranged their leads and riffs in those latter songs that really hooked me as a listener and as a result it almost made me wish the singer had a different style while singing these songs.  That isn’t to say the singer is bad for the style the band starts out with but the shift in the song structures and style almost made it sound as if he didn’t fit in with what was being played later in the album but I was so mesmerized by the way the songs were musically composed I can almost let it go.  ‘Toxic and Aggressive Growth’ is a great example of showing the great talents of this band.

What at first I thought was going to be a good but standard extreme thrash band and album turned out to be something truly different for me thanks to the talented uniqueness of the musicians in the band.  This made ‘Devastating Return’ one of the better surprises I have listened to in some time.

Rating: 4/5