Band: Mantic Ritual
Title: Executioner
Label: Nuclear Blast
Distribution: PIAS
Release date: March 2009
Review: CD

Mantic Ritual were originally formed in 2005 as Meltdown, but to avoid legal problems, they changes the moniker into the current one in September 2008. In 2007, however, before the name change, the quartet recorded their independent debut album, Executioner, with Andy Classen at his Stage One Studio (production, engineering, mix and mastering), which now gets re-released by Nuclear Blast under their actual moniker.
This recording lasts for fifty three minutes and brings an 80-s form of (American-oriented) Thrash Metal. The album does not sound renewing, even though the band mixes Thrash-elements from bands as (early) Megadeth, Exodus, Metallica and Slayer, with more intense and extreme Metal à la Possessed and Destruction, and slightly punkish influences (in the vein of Ramones and D.R.I.). Some parts have a NWOBHM-approach, and the band even seems to be influenced by bands as Mercyful Fate, Celtic Frost and Usurper. At the one hand almost every single existing cliché has been used and that’s an enormous shame, yet on the other the average quality is acceptable, but nothing more than ‘average’.

75/100

Ivan Tibos.