We are fast approaching Dying Victims Productions‘ October 20 release date for the debut album of the Bogotá-based speed metal band Reckless. Or rather, that album is rushing toward us with the momentum of an 18-wheeler whose brakes have failed at the zenith of its power.
The band jam the pedal down on the very first track, “Kneel Before the Gods“, and they don’t ease up very much until the closing track “Unholy Odyssey” has run its own riotous course. It’s an album fueled by adrenaline, and it’s a big transfusion of adrenaline for listeners, but as you’ll discover from our full streaming premiere, the thrills derive from more than just the music’s turbocharged intensity.
True to their name, Reckless do make music that really moves, with no regard for life or limb. The drums hammer like big overheating pistons; the guitars feverishly skitter, slash, and blaze; the reverb-enhanced vocals savagely howl and bark at the moon like rabid wolves racing on the hunt (and you’ll likely want to bark right along with them too).
The band create dangerous delirium, and wild soloing superheats the delirium, while also creating an aura of the supernatural. But as previewed above, there’s more going on here than breakneck barbarism.
Take for example the throbbing and swirling keyboard overture to “Crimson Obsession“, whose magical properties carry forward and soar into splendor via the glittering brilliance of the song’s soloing, or the gloriously darting arpeggios that launch the well-named “Glittering Death“, and the dual-guitar glories that later follow.
Or take the haunting organ overture to “Behind the Mist“, a brief spell before Reckless hit you with a panoply of infernally majestic riffs and sorcerous soloing whose sounds gleam like gold, and a performance by the rhythm section that punches the pulse hard.
Or, for one more example of the songs’ exhilarating twists and turns, consider the spectral, wailing solo and rapidly tumbling drum acrobatics that help make “Unholy Odyssey” a spectacular finale for the album.
And that brings us back to a point made earlier:
While the songs’ thrashing and gnashing wildness is a key to their high-voltage thrills and visceral contagiousness, Reckless are equally adept at cloaking everything in heavy metal glory and creating a transcendent atmosphere of being in the company of witches, warlocks, and cavorting demons, banishing mundane reality to a far corner of the unearthly realms they conjure in the mind’s eye. In other words, Reckless had good reason to name the album Sharp Magik Steel.
And with that we’ll leave you to what now seems like a strong contender for the best speed metal album of the year:
RECKLESS are:
Jawbreaker – Bass
Spitfire – Guitar
Rites666 – Drums
W. Metalbringer – Guitar/Lead Vocals
Dying Victims Productions will lavishly release Sharp Magik Steel on CD, vinyl LP, and cassette tape formats, and all of it features the cover art created by Velio Josto.
PRE-ORDER:
https://dyingvictims.com/
https://dyingvictimsproductions.bandcamp.com/album/sharp-magik-steel
RECKLESS:
https://www.facebook.com/RecklessSpeedMetal/
https://recklessband.bandcamp.com/