Urkraft – The Inhuman Aberration / 2006 Earache / 10 Tracks / http://www.urkraft.dk / http://www.earache.com / Reviewed 26 July 2006

My, my; the opening to “The Inhuman Aberration” is some of the best thrash metal that I’ve heard in the twenty-first century. The opening guitar riffs to “Too Strong For The Strongest Lord” will remind listeners of an early Slayer. The vocals take away from the power of the guitars, but allow Urkraft to make a much more balanced assault. The serious positive about the vocals has to be that individuals know exactly what the hell the lead is saying. When I’m reviewing a thrash or metal album, and there are no lyrics, the fact that vocals often are undecipherable is one of the biggest pet peeves. Luckily, Urkraft has very clean production through all of “The Inhuman Aberration”.

This means that individuals can do more than just bang their heads for forty minutes; if they wanted to, intrepid youths can go and dissect all the riffs and drum hits of Urkraft and learn some serious skills from the band. The tracks on “The Inhuman Aberration” may be on the slightly longer side of normal, but Urkraft throws so much in the way of extra material into every song on the disc that the disc might as well be eighty-two instead of forty-one minutes. The band has to put forth speedy guitar lines and screamed-out vocals throughout the entirety of the disc, but this does not mean that they have to cut the same track ten times. Rather, “Too Strong For The Strongest Lord” has little in common besides on a superficial level with “This Great Summer”.

While still blazing fast, Urkraft has found some space in this track to fit in a little progressive and dungeon metal to the mix. With this inclusion, one could almost hear Urkraft’s music being the score to a horror movie. Even the fact that Urkraft comes out with some of the most brutal metal music that anyone has heard, there is still a pop side to the act that allows a much wider swath of individuals enjoyment in the music off of “The Inhuman Aberration”. Urkraft cranks out hit after hit on “The Inhuman Aberration”, and I know what metal band I will be listening to for the rest of the summer. There is nary a weakness to be found on “The Inhuman Aberration”; Urkraft has successfully navigated all the pitfalls associated with metal to come up with this album, a gold record even if the disc only sells ten copies.

Top Tracks: This Great Summer, The Only Gods

Rating: 8.0/10

[JMcQ]