HOLY MOSES

On a purely visceral level, the new HOLY MOSES is a more satisfying beast than ARCH ENEMY's latest — a female-fronted thrash album with roaring harsh vocals and simple, speed-picking riffing that should make any SLAYER, SODOM or THE HAUNTED fan happy.

Frontwoman Sabina Classen has been doing this off and on since the early 1980s (!) and, like many of her German metal contemporaries, from SODOM and TANKARD to Doro Pesch, she knows what the band's longtime fans want, and she delivers it in style. An entirely new lineup from the band's late-1980s heyday (signed to Warner Bros. for one album!),one that doesn't include producer extraordinaire and Sabina's ex-husband Andy Classen, delivers textbook thrash with few surprises. While you get little of the guitar flair the Amott brothers have brought to ARCH ENEMY, you instead get stripped-down, well-executed (if a bit antiseptic — the drums sound programmed) thrash metal.

Classen is proud of her roar — the liner notes claim "no harmonizers, pitch transposers, samplers or VSOing used anywhere on the lead vocals of Sabina on this album. No tricks, no bullshit, just 'BADGIRL MOTHERFUCKIN' OVARY-BALLS'!!!!" She does have a rather vomitous tone, though her enunciation is relatively clear and it's somewhere a little left-field of a regular death metal vocal. Despite her MILF-y good looks, she definitely sounds like someone you don't want to piss off, lest you risk a kick in the, uh, ovary-balls…

HOLY MOSES isn't setting the world on fire here — in fact, they're probably just preaching to the converted at this point, satisfying those who already know the band stands for high-quality, workmanlike thrash. But "Strength, Power, Will, Passion" deserves better than a cursory licensing deal and a quick disappearance into the back catalog. It's a surprisingly potent slab of thrash that'll induce high-caliber headbanging.