“Soon you will enter your final season.”
Indiana blackened thrash quartet Wraith return with Fueled By Fear, their first full-length release since 2021’s Undo the Chains. An all-out headbanging affair with more Venom than you could shake a parental advisory sticker at, the album continues everything beloved by fans about the latter album – rock n’ roll riffage that takes the same notes from NWOBHM that the earliest American thrashers did in the 80’s, gruff growled vocals that bring to mind a version of Motörhead fronted by a possessed Lemmy, and shreddy whammy-abuse solos at every opportunity.
The band pull it out the bag in terms of writing some solid tunes. “Ice Cold Bitch” could easily be straight off Venom’s Black Metal, whereas “Code Red” could easily find itself on Ghoul’s Dungeon Bastards – that they aren’t is impressive in and of itself, showing how ‘locked in’ these guys are with their influences and sound. Similarly, there’s Celtic Frost in the DNA of “Horses and Hounds”, a strange track which is in major key. “Shame and Suffering” is so 1986 Slayer that you’d think it was lifted straight from the “Reign in Blood” sessions. That said, “Shame and Suffering” is not entirely derivative of Slayer, with the thrash-to-blackening ratio firmly lopsided in favour of the blackening in one evil section that is nothing but second-wave Norwegian black metal.
“Vulture” shows Wraith’s punk credentials over a good ole’ D-beat. In line with this, the band make the smart decision of holding back on the massive shreddy solos to the extent that they have been utilised over the rest of the largely thrash-inspired album.
From a production standpoint, Fueled By Fear is great. They returned to CJ Rayson on the mixing and mastering desks, who has a history with the band dating back to 2018’s System Overload single. He does a good job here of capturing this band in a way that will make you feel like you’re witnessing them live (which I suspect is this band’s habitat in which they most flourish,) but with all the intelligibility of a modern metal record. The mixing also incorporates all the standards of modern blackened thrash that a listener would expect, and frankly, the songs would feel a little wrong without them. For example, CJ’s use of reverbs to create space around vocals is very tasteful and helps to keep the lyrics intelligible above the rest of the band who are left as they would sound in the room.
Whilst, for the most part, mix components are easily distinguished from one another, there are just one or two examples where the mix becomes a little chaotic because of how far forward the drums are in the overall sonic picture. For example, on “Truth Decay” the rest of the band are largely buried behind the drums, and on “Heathen’s Touch”, the drums are again just a little too loud, though not so badly on the latter. As well as the mix, the level of sparkly high frequencies across all the songs is just on the cusp of excess, but nothing terrible that will make the album unlistenable. The songs are mastered rather loud, but the aggression that this introduces sonically lends itself to the style and helps maintain the sheer Motörhead-esque energy you might get out of Wraith in the live environment.
The decision to include 14 tracks on this album is a little strange – though it is true that the vast majority of tracks are around 2 minutes and therefore it may be the case that so many tracks were necessary to meet the 45-minute mark, there is only so much a record like this can or perhaps should do. Regardless, the band manages to keep out of one-note territory, but maintain a consistent sound. Wraith have certainly delivered on the front of new material, and a lot of tracks will always be better than too little – no fans will be complaining.
To conclude, Wraith have grown from a humble one-man-band project (what blackened thrash band hasn’t…) to a quartet of sheer punk energy pounding out NWOBHM-worshipping 80’s thrash riffs, with enough obvious pointers to influences like Venom, Whiplash, and Slayer to intrigue fans of such bands, but with an air of originality that keeps the product from merely coming across as a tribute act, and Fueled By Fear highlights this in the album’s extremely professional and authentic overall quality – from the magnificent and fitting album cover created by veteran artist Andrei Bouzikov, whose previous works include Municipal Waste’s The Art of Partying, Havok’s Conformicide, and Toxic Holocaust’s Chemistry of Consciousness, amongst many others; to the production style that allows the old-school nature of the music to shine through, yet everything sounds polished and like a modern album should. I’d love to see Wraith live at some point, as I get the impression that these songs are designed primarily for the live environment – any one of these songs would sound even better from the middle of a mosh. The music is fast, raw, sneering, everything that it should be, and every member of Wraith perform on top form, never missing a beat. The band have a great formula down, a formula which has clearly begun to prove itself to be one for success.
7/10
Fueled by Fear releases on the 28th June and can be pre-ordered here (US/UK).