Municipal WasteElectrified Brain

It’s been five years since the last full-length assault of unbridled mayhem from Richmond, VA thrashers Municipal Waste, and if you thought the band had changed much in that intervening period then you are sorely mistaken.

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Electrified Brain is exactly everything you expect from the Waste: high speed party metal—nothing more and nothing less.

There’s two speeds, faster and faster still, with a slight gear change to (for them) a mid-paced chug in Restless and Wicked before hurtling back to the bar at high velocity for Ten Cent Beer Night, and who wants to be late for that? Sometimes it’s crossover that’s closer to hardcore, like the title track and Putting on Errors, or crossover that’s closer to thrash, like pretty much everything else.

There are few truer purveyors of old school crossover thrash than Municipal Waste, and while there’s something in the assertion that you really don’t need more than a couple of their albums to have them all, this is one you should get.

Choruses are simplistic fist-pumping gang vocals preceded by shouted verses about beer, metal or some kind of attack by the undead and followed up with a blistering solo that might last a few seconds or so before the next song crashes through the door. Not a moment is wasted, but every second is totally wasted, teetering on the brink of high speed collapse as fourteen songs blaze by in just over half an hour, Tony Foresta screaming his head off while Ryan Waste and Nick Poulos wield the savage blades of razor-sharp riffs. There are few truer purveyors of old school crossover thrash than Municipal Waste, and while there’s something in the assertion that you really don’t need more than a couple of their albums to have them all, this is one you should get.

STAND OUT TRACKS: Demoralizer, Ten Cent Beer Night, High Speed Steel
STICK THIS NEXT TO: Toxic Holocaust, D.R.I., Nuclear Assault