Review of the Album "Indoctrinate" by the Thrash Metal Band Unrelenting Force

Unrelenting Force is a modern thrash metal band from New York City and even though there are modern American thrash metal bands, they are not as good as they were before. This is a new band that as of 2017 has only one album called “Indoctrinate.” There is something missing from this album, something that gives albums that “wow” factor. The album has rough vocals, heavy riffs, and a voice somewhat harsher so as to be almost a death metal sound, similar to the band Hatebreed. Or is this album really that lacking in the “wow” factor? At least that’s the way it felt during the first listen of this album.

The music on here may as well be described as unrelenting thrash metal because it does not really let up on the speed at least on the song called Noose.

As the vocalist shouts the words “how much longer must we wait” in the song called “Pathos” it continues at best an average thrash metal effort that drags into the halfway point. “Shroud” starts with the same rough vocals and the band tries to sound melodic as the song cannot match the creativity of band such as Kreator. In Hindsight is a song about being able to visualize a far better world than what is present to us and this small portion that we see is called visible light. Can we only learn in life from painful experiences? That is a good question but in my view, we can learn something from pleasant experiences as well. Burnt Destiny is a song about trying to erase all the painful memories from our past as there is no turning back to the past.

“Noose” begins this hardcore thrash metal album and the song is about having reached the end of the line and being defeated. He thinks there is nothing that can save him or stop him from his impending doom. He thinks that when he reaches the other side (afterlife) he will be free from the pain that he is experiencing. “Indoctrinate” (wow cannot believe I misspelled that word so many times) is another good song in this album as the song is about forces that come from the sky to derail our future plans.

The more that I listen to this album, it reminds me stylistically of bands such as Scalping Screen and St. Hood. However, it would not be fair to compare New York City’s Unrelenting Force to those two bands. Noose and Indoctrinate are the two best songs in this album so far but how good do they make the rest of the album? Even though there have been decent American thrash metal bands since the dawn of the 2000’s they just have not been able to match European thrash metal bands in terms of skill or technique.

Overall, Indoctrinate is a decent groove kind of thrash and it is certainly better than Pantera’s “The Great Southern Trendkill.” The best songs in Indoctrinate are the mentioned Noose, the title track, and Elixir of Pain so this album gets a 70 points out of 100.