CHILDREN OF TECHNOLOGY

"Fuck the 21st Century; we ain't done with the 1980s yet!" could have been a statement released by Italian crossover crusties CHILDREN OF TECHNOLOGY since "It's time to Face the Doomsday" is '80s thrashing punk in the most genuine of ways. It is nearly impossible to fake the kind of rowdy and rotten vibes heard on the disc, no matter the degree of retro revivalism involved. Either you get it or you don't; CHILDREN OF TECHNOLOGY get it, kick it, punch it, stab it, spit it on it, and have more fun with it than a container full of spider monkeys.

Original? Nah; nor is it the stuff of Year End List contention. It is just high octane, apocalyptic thrash 'n smash crust punk that paints a world that looks like an awful lot like the one painted by the members of WASTELANDER and sounds like old-new-school thrashers TOXIC HOLOCAUST in a "new" sense, yet with Bronze-era MOTÖRHEAD and DISCHARGE kicking hard in the gaps and VOIVOD jumping on stage in the middle of it all just to up the chaos. Of course it is D-beaten and razor-bladed to ruin with gritty vocals and the feeling one gets when the buckles break loose and the buttons pop off. As always, the riffs will make it or break it and in that regard "It's Time to Face the Doomsday" makes it; effective as much for the primal simplicity as the heat rising off the strings.

It is short enough so that even the attention broken won't have time to bitch, but even within a short running time the band still injects some quirky coolness, including snotty/freaky/trippy vocal shifts and those conjured visions of VOIVOD-ian spacecraft trips back into the earth's atmosphere to snap a few pictures of the planet's charred remains right before the whole thing disintegrates into an terrestrial afterthought.