Label: AFM Records
Release date: June 3, 2016
Production: Charly Steinhauer
Album length: 59.45 min
Genre: Thrash Metal
Rating: 8.5/10
Plenty of people figured that all that was left of Charly Steinhauer and his cult German Teutonic thrash metal outfit Paradox was a beautiful memory. When Paradox released “Tales of the Weird” at the end of 2012, an album that simply confirmed the extraordinary inspiration and expressive sharpness they had kept building up and pushing higher over a string of releases starting with “Electrify” (2008), serious health problems took Steinhauer away from the studio and the stage. It looked pretty clear that the Paradox story was over for good.
Luckily, Charly thought otherwise. During the band’s “apparent hibernation” the guy had piled up another dozen ideas, and after a successful recovery he decided to record one more Paradox album. In the meantime he’d also lost the bandmates who helped shape the sound of the previous albums. Above all that meant the incredible Christian Muenzner, the kind of guy everyone would want in their band, so at first the whole thing felt like mission impossible. How do you restore the entire specific character of the band’s sound and style? Well, Steinhauer had all the right answers for that too, and once again proved that he personally is Paradox. He reshaped the new line-up by drafting in two Greeks and… a Slovenian. Yes, you read that right. Tilen Hudrap (Vicious Rumors) picked up the bass, while the rest of the band is now rounded out by Greeks Gus Drax (guitar) and Kostas Milonas (drums).
When it comes to Teutonic metal of German origin, you can (loosely speaking) tell two main currents apart. One is the widely recognized and far more notorious one on the global metal map, headed by Sodom, Kreator and Destruction; the other has somehow stayed unfairly overlooked right up to today and, in the eyes of the critics, never got its due. Alongside Vendetta, Deathrow, Protector and Assassin (we can toss Mekong Delta in there too), that’s where “our” Paradox belong. It’s the current that brought a touch more melody into its songwriting, and more dynamics and complexity as well. That’s why the Bay Area influence shows through sooner. With vocals that aren’t necessarily “screechy-rasping” or brutalized, but keep the musicality going with a clean vocal tone. Well, Charly’s is one of those voices. Up high it’s still remarkably piercing, powerful, fierce, expressive. It carries a note of doom and occult gloom.
“Pangea” is another excellent achievement that does full justice to the thrash metal legacy the Paradox name stands for. Hard to call it a masterpiece, since Steinhauer sticks to a tried-and-true formula that hits instantly and doesn’t budge from it by an inch. So the new album slots effectively and credibly into the musical picture painted by the previous three. Maybe the only slight gripe is the length of the songs, which are mostly gloriously dressed up with a gradual build-up of atmosphere in the intros as well as dramatic outros, but the span between tracks is pretty similar, and the band could have said everything it had to say in, say, a good 40 minutes. Still, alongside all that occult gloom, Paradox remain downright wicked too. They’ve always shown off that wickedness openly, along with their generally bristling production, and the main riff of “Manhunt” couldn’t be a better embodiment of it.
The band’s playing is superb. While keeping Steinhauer’s vocal virtues intact, he’s found in Gus Drax a tremendous partner for writing excellent guitar embellishments in the transitions, laid over the passages, thirds included, and the two guitarists read each other brilliantly when weaving their solo duels. The rhythm section is relentless. The drums are packed with incredibly explosive kinetics and variety, and the riffs are masterfully backed up in all the right places by torpedoing double bass pedals. Woven into all of this is the metallic, grinding sound of the bass lines from our own Tilen Hudrap, who does his job with real distinction and fits in completely autonomously, that is, independently, without any suggestions from boss Steinhauer.
From head to toe, everything on this album feels uniquely “Paradoxical.” The dynamics are excellent, the result of the record’s pleasing creative variety, and the album’s high “flow” follows naturally from that. The title track, which is also one of the longest, counts as the centerpiece of the record, if not the backbone in terms of how representative it is of the band’s stylistic sound. In both quality and ideas, then, Paradox don’t ease off one bit with the new album when we compare the new material to the band’s work from 2000 onward. That is, after the “dead nineties,” the year of the band’s fresh start.
With “Pangea” Paradox don’t surprise anymore, but it’s an immense pleasure to see Steinhauer sticking to the proven artistry of his own metal-craft specifics in his musical vision, exploring, nurturing and deepening them, all while deftly holding the high musical quality the Paradox name stands for. “Pangea” is no exception in that regard, just another excellent studio album from a legendary band that, given all of Charly’s defiance, deserves a special kind of respect.
Author: Aleš Podbrežnik
Track list:
01. Apophis
02. Raptor
03. The Raging Planet
04. Ballot Or Bullet
05. Manhunt
06. Cheat & Pretend
07. Pangea
08. Vale Of Tears
09. Alien Godz
10. El Muerte
Line-up:
Charly Steinhauer – vocals, guitar
Tilen Hudrap – bass
Gus Drax – guitar
Kostas Milonas – drums
