Attacker – The God Particle (Cruz del Sur Music)
Wednesday, 10th April 2024
While many bands who started in the 80s that reformed decades later still chase former glory, other artists such as Attacker prove that they still can write, record, and issue relevant material to the current generation apart from those early classics. The God Particle as the seventh studio album comes eight years beyond Sins of the World – although a six-song Armor of the Gods EP did hit the streets in 2018. We all know that the extra downtime has proven fruitful in terms of the minute details that allow musicians to be fully satisfied with the final product – and that’s definitely the case here in terms of the eight versatile tracks that span the heavy / power metal platform chock full of stirring riffs, energetic tempos, diverse textures, as well as soaring melodies that go full tilt for the cause.
Vocalist Bobby Lucas developed a conceptual story around a Large Hadron Collider Particle Accelerator from Cern, Switzerland – creating energetic collisions of protons that break into subatomic component for study – with a secondary layer of satanic rituals performed at the site to call in evil from another dimension. As you wrap your head around the sci-fi meets reality/ritual content, rest assured the music behind the words matches the intriguing, thought-provoking lyrics as there are plenty of fluid rhythms, twin guitar harmonies, galloping bass and progressive drumming to make you think of artists like Helstar, Iron Maiden, Jag Panzer, and others who prefer to put more aggression or girth to their songwriting than most. Bobby immediately pushes his vocal delivery into Rob Halford / James Rivera charging falsetto tones on the gallop-fueled opener “Knights of Terror”, the pace floating between semi-thrash meets standard mid-tempo power overtones. Mike Benetatos and Jon Hasselbrink as guitarists understand the need of interspersing clean, adventurous guitar lines next to their normal crunchy power chord machinery they implement in every song – aspects of King Diamond / Mercyful Fate float in for “Curse of Creation” while the stop/start double barrel rhythms within “World in Flames” push into latter day 80s Bay Area thrash platforms (the uplifting dual harmonies key to providing additional memorable sequences).
Recording in the comforts of drummer Mike Sabatini’s Bandmother Recording Studio, he would also mix the record with Bloodfeast guitarist C.J. Scioscia while the mastering took place through Joe Lambert. Executing their familiar brand of classic heavy/power metal in an efficient 33 minutes and change, Attacker continually prove their viable execution record after record – delivering in The God Particle another benchmark album all followers of the genre need to hear.
