The artwork that emblazons Municipal Waste’s Electrified Brain (Nuclear Blast) sets the scene as strongly as anything else could have: a Flying-V guitar violently piercing the left cheek of a skeletal head that’s also being shocked. That’s precisely what the nearly thirty-four-minute attack feels like. It’s a pummeling marathon of fun-loving ire, of bodacious violence.
The newest (and highly anticipated) release from the Virginia-based thrash hooligans houses the types of riffs you want your mom to meet. Additionally, pound for pound, Tony Foresta produces the best vocals of the modern scene, bar none. The hectic delivery working in tandem with welcoming revelry is simply unmatched in today’s day and age.
Guitar solos are procured at a rate of a dime a dozen. But far from a crutch or a diversion, they instead act as another shot of adrenaline, as if anyone even needed more. ‘The Bite’ aptly sounds as if the riff was played on a guitar that had bike chains for strings. OG Waste fans assuredly will find much to appreciate particularly on ‘Crank The Heat’ and ‘Demoralizer,’ but both diehards and casual fans alike will bask in the glory that is “Ten Cent Beer Night.”
For those that are unaware, the song takes its moniker from an event of the same name that befell Cleveland Stadium in 1974 when the MLB team made the boneheaded decision to offer cold ones for 55 cents in today’s dollars as a way of drumming up more interest in the sport. Naturally, the actual attendance was twice the expected total. The long and the short of it is spectators decided to bring fireworks and it didn’t take much liquid courage for rowdy fans to storm the field – some wielding knives.
In other words, the exact thematic intoxicant primed for Municipal Waste to put their toxic handprint on.
Electrified Brain is familiar comfort. It’s the very elixir you require when your red-eye flight is about to depart while you’re barely keeping your eyes open enough to come off as conscious.
Buy the album here: https://www.municipalwaste.net/
8 / 10
MATT COOK