Here at SonicAbuse we like nothing better than to get our teeth into a cracking metal release. This weekend has been particularly fine, then, as we’ve had the pleasure of butting heads with the new release from Iron Knights (see here) and now the excellently named Trainwreck Architect who apparently live, breathe and shit riffs on a daily basis. ‘Trails of the sick’ is a short, sharp shock of an album delivered across ten brutal tracks and wrapped up in the sort of searing, comic-book artwork that bands like W.A.S.P, Autopsy and Aborted take such pleasure in dealing in and, as such, is surely an album that should be high on your list of music to check out. Certainly the band should be thanking artwork maestro Chen-Jeh and album designer Sarah Dellah who have given their music an awesome aesthetic that will encourage artwork fans to check them out even if they’ve never heard the music before.
Fortunately the five-piece (comprising Simon Oullet, Raza Ali Khan, Renaud Baril, Eric Litinas and Marc-Antoine Blackburn) have the music to back up the album’s expansive visual appeal and from the moment the beautifully played intro (‘comatose era’) highlights the band’s instrumental skill to the moment ‘feed them bullets’ draws the album to a close, Trainwreck Architect do a grand job of keeping you thoroughly entertained. The album truly kicks into gear with ‘the culprit’, which introduces the powerful lungs of Simon Oullet. Cruising on a chugging thrash riff, it is Simon’s ecstatic squeal that announces the true arrival of the album and you can’t help but respond in kind. This is real metal, fist-pumping, furious stuff that will leave you breathless and drained but which makes the blood surge for its duration. ‘Die like a legend’ is the stuff that legends are made of, a powerful metal album with a searing riff and a vocal performance that is both powerful and memorable. Fans of Maiden. Priest and Dio will certainly find much to admire here, and the band are both talented and inventive enough to keep things sounding furiously fresh and exciting. ‘The door slams shut’ sees the band experimenting with forms and elements more common with prog-metal acts like Dream Theater than traditional heavy metal, with time changes, vocal effects and more built into the song’s cast-iron hide. It is still heavy as hell, of course, but it has that extra something that marks out the band as an inventive, imaginative act hell-bent on carving out their own musical path. Heading back into primitive thrash territory, ‘deadbeat beatdown’ is an aptly named blast of adrenalin charged brutality that recalls vintage Anthrax pumped up on illicit substances and sent out into the vicious world of bareknuckle boxing matches. It’s a sweaty, obnoxious highlight of the album and is guaranteed to make you head bang until you puke.
Actually opening on a calmer note, despite its title, ‘Rabid psychotic relapse’ is a mid-tempo number with strong hints of black Sabbath and then ‘as killers breathe’ comes out of the gates raging, the riffs piling up before the band take a sideways step into melodic metal territory which has more in common with ‘planet caravan’ than planet rock. It works brilliantly and once again highlights how much more powerful a band sounds when they introduce dynamic elements rather than just simply put their heads down and blast away. ‘Dream pariah’ is a brilliant blast of classic metal sturm und drang before the intro to ‘the narcissist’ slows the pace down to a hate-filled crawl which sounds all the heavier for its brutally heavy, chugging riffs and tom-filled drums. Another album highlight, it is as heavy as metal comes and it neatly leads the listener to the grand finale of ‘feed them bullets’, a full-tilt thrash blast that brings the album to a suitably explosive climax.
‘Traits of the sick’ is one of those metal albums that is just a massive amount of fun. Beautifully produced, the furious percussion and precise guitar work comes through with perfect clarity, whilst in Simon the band have a truly powerful singer who deserves to be heard far and wide. The band are inventive enough to keep their music sounding fresh and vibrant but not so experimental they step far from their beloved heavy metal and the result is varied selection of tracks of which different ones will stand out depending upon your mood as you listen. The artwork is phenominal, belonging to an era when vinyl rather than CD (or download if you must) was the preferred format, and perfectly representative of the music within. All in all, ‘traits of the sick’ is one of those blistering metal records the underground throws up from time to time and it demands your attention. If you call yourself a metalhead, seek out this band for they are far more deserving of your hard-earned cash than anything you’ll hear on a major label. Trainwreck architect rule, it’s that simple.
