Destructor – Sonic Bullet
Destructor. Band, or He-Man’s enemy?
Give up? It’s a band, and their latest album (after an 18 year hiatus) is called Sonic Bullet. They’ve got a sonic bullet locked and loaded, aimed straight at your head.
Unfortunately I didn’t make up that cheezy tag line. It’s the chorus of “Sonic Bullet”, the song, from Sonic Bullet, the album. On an unrelated note, my wife also refers to Sonic’s breakfast burrito as a “Sonic bullet” as well, because it goes through you like … well, anyway.
The cheese factor on Sonic Bullet (the album, not the song or the breakfast entre) is quite high. The second track is heavy, literally. In “Heavy Artillery,” the band manages to yell “heavy” more times than Rob Zombie gets “yeahs” out at his best. There’s a song on here called “Iron Curtain”. Who sings about the Iron Curtain anymore? Destructor does! On “Master of the Universe”, the band has a sweeping effect that’s so cliche I had to chuckle. Hey, “Master of the Universe”? Maybe Destructor IS He-Man’s enemy afterall!
You would think that all of this would be enough to turn me off of this album, and it would have if the music hadn’t been so damn good! Destructor metals its way through songs like they’ve been doing this for a while. The best way to describe this band musically is to call them a thrashy version of Iron Maiden. The entire disc is peppered with kick drum attacks and whipping guitar leads. The vocals ape Bruce Dickenson, and aren’t half bad.
It’s no surprise that the band’s last album was released in 1985, as Sonic Bullet sounds like it could have been the band’s 1987 follow up. Everything from this disc screams 80’s metal, so much so that I couldn’t tell if these guys were stuck in a time warp or if this was a send up, a’la Spinal Tap and The Darkness. It doesn’t come off as guys from 2003 doing late 80’s power metal — it comes off as a late 80’s power metal album. Destructor is the real deal, like a caveman trapped in ice twenty years ago and thawed out for the purpose of ROCKING!
Don’t ask why there would be a caveman around in the 80’s, or how he would learn how to play guitar for that matter. You already know too much.
01. Sonic Bullet
02. Heavy Artillery
03. Silent Enemy
04. Blackest Night
05. Master Of The Universe
06. G-Force
07. The Triangle
08. Pounding Evil
09. Iron Curtain