The Dark Cookie grabs the hilt and takes a twist of the new album from Knife!

KNIFE are relatively new kids on the German Thrash Metal block.  Hailing from Marlburg Heaven Into Dust is their 2^nd long player (well as long as a decent Thrash album should be at 34 and a half minutes) and if you have a taste for brash and loud Blackened, Deathly Speed Metal with a hefty glug of Punk to get the juices to flow.

Lets talk about the package before the music.  Love the logo! You know exactly what you are getting, steel hard, razor-sharp METAL. And Heaven Into Dust is the latest outing for their leather-clad dark metal mystery “Slasher Dude” with no name who appears to be chained but fighting off the other denizens of a fiery circle of Hell!  The imagery fits the music to a tee (and it would look grand on a tee, shirt that is.

From the get-go we know where we stand.  The creepy church organ and spoken word intro to “Hawks of Hades” to me takes me straight back to the good old days of Thrash meets Speed meets Heavy Metal, no nonsense just a wall of ear shattering sound, no frills just METAL!

Well fuck me! There is Bass in them their hills! “Night Vision” dials the Punk up to 11 and beyond kicking off with a Bass riff the great LEMMY would be proud of! This one is going to break necks! I love it!

And so it goes on. “Heaven into Dust” is a worthy title track.  I love Vince’s histrionic, but clean vocals, right in my style. And my god (and yes with the themes though the album that is deliberate) the band are so tight and precise, thundering drums, wailing guitars, and punky bass. “Iron Scepter” is no better example of this.

There is not a duff track here. “With Torches We March” is as good as any of the heaviest NWOBHM bands, man does it groove.  “Black Oath and Spells” is exactly that, as black as it gets! “The Arson Alchemist” is as Death Metal as this gets, with its fast-chug and lyrics.

“A Phantom Devised” is a face-melter, pure and simple. “Realm of Violence” is what IRON MAIDEN sound like if they were a Germanic Speed Metal band (there’s a fight waiting to happen Eddie The ‘Ead vs Knife’s Slasher. I don’t know who would win, but wherever it happened would be decimated!).

Which brings us to “No Gods in the Dark” a face-melting and very Teutonic way to end with the classically tinged solo, like ACCEPT should sound! Do not be fooled by all the Death this, Blackened that, this is a mighty fine super-fast METAL album.  The sort you can quite happily to stick on at the beginning when you get to the end.  Oh wait! Like I’ve just done.

Knife – Heaven Into Dust is out this Friday (25th August) via Napalm Records