Band:	Artillery
Album:	X
Style:	Thrash metal
Release date:	May 2021

01. The Devil's Symphony
02. In Thrash We Trust
03. Turn Up The Rage
04. Silver Cross
05. In Your Mind
06. The Ghost Of Me
07. Force Of Indifference
08. Varg I Veum
09. Mors Ontologica
10. Eternal Night
11. Beggars In Black Suites

Fire your guns.

Anyone who has dug deeper into the thrash genre beyond the big six will likely have come across the fourth-greatest thing to come out of Denmark (bacon, Lego and Lars Ulrich make up the top three, if you're asking), Artillery. A band that in their prime created three of perhaps the most overlooked classics in the genre, though not hitting the same heights in their subsequent reformations, Artillery have done well by themselves and their fans in still producing quality releases.

The band's brand of melodic hard-hitting thrash is still as catchy as it was back in the 1980's and, alongside Death Angel, offers a variation of the thrash sound that is the best of both worlds for fans, with the band also adding a healthy dose of straight-up heavy metal that is able to get you to sing along as your head shakes wildly on the end of your neck. Led by long-time members Michael Stützer and Peter Thorslund, X is the first release without long-time guitarist Morten Stützer, who unfortunately passed away not long after The Face Of Fear; on X, Artillery know where to aim and they don't hold back.

X is certainly a top-heavy record, with the opening four tracks seeing the band burst out of the gates, raising hopes that Artillery have reached a new level in this late-career renaissance, with the band finding the perfect mix in songs built on a thrash structure but with a healthy dose of heavy metal to create a hard-hitting hybrid. While the album isn't as consistent as it goes on, it does have some other strong songs sitting back to catch you off guard, with "Force Of Indifference", "Mors Ontologica" and "Beggars In Black Suits" giving you good reason to carry on after the initial charge out of the gates starts to slow. I also feel the album should come with a warning label for "Silver Cross", as it begins with a collage of noises that involves child talk and the sound of cats; if you are listening to this on headphones out in public you will be caught out and find yourself looking around for the source of these noises before you connect the dots (not that this happened to me *ahem*).

Artillery show no signs of slowing down; while Michael Stützer and Thorslund are the only pre-2000 members left, Dahl and Madsen near their ten-year anniversary with the band in style. Dahl in particular has one of the most underrated voices in the genre, able to balance soaring vocals a la Joey Belladonna with traditional machine gun vocals typical of the genre. The recruitment of Meier appears to be a wise choice as he slots in well with the band and contributes well to what is a tsunami of riffs and solos. The glossy modern production job of X ensures a powerful and coherent sound that will please listeners, though it does lack in character and grit to differentiate it from its peers.

While I am not solely a foot-to-the-floor speed fanatic, "The Ghost Of Me" is to variation what a pothole is to a smooth road; it is a song the album could do without, built around a chorus that just isn't strong enough to support the rest of the song surrounding it, as a result collapsing under its own weight. Aside from this track, X doesn't have bad tracks, just a collection of songs that don't reach the heights to take this album to the next level; songs like "Varg I Veum" and "In Your Mind" are fun ,but nothing that will have you hitting the skip button to get to them in short order.

While certainly a strong album and one that adds to the band's reputation as one of the better European thrash bands not from Germany, X is unlikely to appear on many album of the year lists, as it falls just short of the line. It is not to sweep away what is otherwise a strong and quality album; for a band this late into an on/off career it certainly stands tall, but if you are looking for more than that, then you will find yourself a few coins short. Well worth a listen and a good calling card to get people to check out their back catalogue, Artillery are by no means living off former glories and still have plenty of fuel in the tank.