Band:	Project Pain
Album:	Brothers In Blood
Style:	Thrash metal
Release date:	January 20, 2018
A review by:	BitterCOld

01. Primator
02. Final March
03. Silent Invader
04. Eternal Flames
05. Decay
06. Brothers In Blood
07. Regret Nothing
08. Fueled By Fear...
09. ...Driven By Hate
10. I Don't Give A Fuck

Many moons ago some dumbass when writing about thrash laid down the following law:

Quote:
"?as that horns-tossing metal dude Shakespeare once quoth, "Brevity is the soul of Thrash"... there is a reason the genre's best (Reign In Blood, Bonded By Blood, Peace Sells Blood, Master Of Blood, Eternal Bloodmare, and Darkness Descends... In Blood) all clock in in the 30-40 minute range."

Oh, hey, that dumbass, errrr extremely wise fellow was me.

Seems Project Pain read those words and took them to their metal hearts. Or, far more likely, being of roughly the same age as I am, just grew up on the same tunes and absorbed the same basic principals as I did. Their latest, Brothers In Blood is straight to the fucking point. Ten tracks that clock in at roughly 35 minutes. And scores bonus points for including "Blood" in the title.

This is the third album of theirs I have reviewed for MS and pretty follows suit with 2015's Thrashed To Kill. They don't really fuck around with extended songs or slowing down the tempo or any of that nonsense. They just go about thrashing like rabid thrashers, cramming a metric fuckton of riffs and soli into that 35 minutes as the drummer pounds the skins like he's having a seizure. On top of all that headbanging chaos the vocalist froths away at the mic with love ballads like "Silent Invader" or catchy slogans you'll find yourself singing along with like "Regret Nothing" and "I Don't Give A Fuck."

The album does have some issues. I still think the production could be either punchier or maybe rougher about the edges, but hey, production has been a big issue of mine even with recent releases from the genre's most hallowed names in the past decade. And I'm fairly certain PP doesn't have the budget of, oh, say, Metallica or Slayer.

Further, It's throwback thrash, which is a lot of fun, but not exactly full of musical twists and turns (which is also a strength, to be fair).

Finally, the album is a bit uneven. Whereas it seems a hell of a lot of albums tend to lead off with the strongest track to immediately grab the listener by the short curlies, Brothers In Blood builds (in Blood) as it goes along. It really starts to click with the 5th track, "Decay" and finishes much stronger that it kicks off. A feature which makes it easier to hit the play button again once it concludes.

So yeah, it's a bunch of Dutch dudes who grew up on thrash and, every so often, take a week off from flipping wheels of Gouda, plugging dikes, making clogs or whatever the fuck it is Dutch people do (help me out here, Marcel? ) and bang out an album for the fun of it.

And if you don't like it, well, I'm pretty sure they don't give a fuck.

While Project Pain won't set the world ablaze with a genre-redefining release, you know you're gonna be able to fire up some breakneck tunes perfect for that daily commute, blowing up pixelated adversaries on your game device of choice or standing back to back with your best amigo fending off the zombie apocalypse with your weapon of choice.

I call dibs on claw hammer.

Brothers In Bandcamp