Originally written by Ross Main.
For those who think the culminated sound of Kreator and Obscura, with the shrill vocals, bass presence and progressive madness of Persefone’s Truth Inside the Shades album might be worthwhile – read on. For those who think the culminated sound of the Led Zeppelin bassist, a ginger twat from Queens of the Stone Age and Dave BLOODY Grohl might be worthwhile – fuck off.
Clearly operating under the influence of a lot of old thrash, without the chronological luxury of getting away with obvious riffs and patterns, Vektor are an astonishing foursome who make an hour and eight minutes of corner-to-corner progressive thrash metal look as easy as ABC – or AC/DC.
When it comes to pulling their own weight, there is not one member of the band who is tugging anything less than a musically talented and dedicated Caucasian male – particularly Blake Anderson, whose drumming is on the fucking mark, composed and controlled, expressive and brave. Frank Chin’s bass dictates the weight and width of any given section, exploring the lengths and breadths of his instrument’s neck and its relation to the six-stringed riffage rabidly provided by the two Freidman-haired guitar whizzes Erik Nelson and David Disanto. But it’s the blistering, yet blistered guitar leads and Disanto’s light-headed inhaled screams that really convey the Black Future theme of a broken world destroyed by man that arguably justified their self-imposed “sci-fi thrash” label.
Whilst dissecting a Vektor track is about as futile as they’d have us know the fate of our world is, it’s important to transmit that when the thrash takes over, it chops about as fast as man can chop and anything between that is an unpredictable assortment of paced-paranoia, guitar lessons and military Megadeth chord divisions.
Despite that, “Deoxyribonucleic Acid” does stand out as a particularly well conceived and thoughtful example, summing up the Vektor elements of technical guitar passages and untrackable structure, traveled by die-hard thrash and interspersed with slower mortal riffs, that strongly reflect the theme of the album.
There is no lack of inspiration or ideas coming from Vektor, and their style and execution has a future that is anything but black.