Municipal Waste – The Fatal Feast (Nuclear Blast Records)
Monday, 25th March 2013
Municipal Waste has the market cornered. No, not on “party metal,” but the crossover market is essentially all theirs. When Blistering uses its finite brain power to think of other worthy crossover bands at the present time, a blank is drawn and it heads right back to MW and crossover forerunners, DRI. But Municipal Waste is probably going to have a much more robust career than Kurt Brecht and the crew, and on their fifth album The Fatal Feast, the band does what it does best…and does it a little better than before.
Sixteen songs here, all fast, for the most part, and a lot of them have a tremendous amount of sonic bleed-through. Such a thing has happened on every Municipal Waste album and methinks the band is fully aware of this, which is probably why they find little nooks and crannies in which to insert some variation, like on the rollicking “New Dead Masters,” which runs right into the Slayer “Dittohead”-like “Unholy Abductor.” Heck, even a guitar solo makes an appearance on “Idiot Check.”
The band still hits on the “fun” aspect like no other, like on “You’re Cut Off,” a song about…drinking. The more metal-oriented churn and burn of “Crushing Chest Wound” is a winner, as is the zippy “Jesus Freaks.” A sampled intro help out “Covered In Sick – The Barfer,” while “Residential Disaster” drifts over to the band’s noticeable punk roots. And it’s cool to see Nuclear Assault singer John Connolly make an appearance on the title track. Dude’s voice fits the song like a glove.
There’s a distinct practicality to what Municipal Waste does; no one else seems to be concerned with writing songs of this nature, thus the Virginia dudes have every right to keep going at this rate. The Fatal Feast is probably the best thing the band has done, but when your other four albums sound like you’re fifth album, it really doesn’t matter. What matters is that Municipal Waste are arguably the most impactful crossover band of the last two decades.
(This content originally appeared on Blistering.com)
