HOLYCIDE – Towards Idiocracy

RELEASE YEAR: 2024

BAND URL: https://holycide.bandcamp.com/

If you miss the essential Megadeth from their first 4 (arguably 5) albums, equally essential Kreator from their first 5, Slayer from their first 6, some Sepultura from Beneath The Remains¹⁹⁸⁹ and don’t mind some D.R.I. thrown into the mix poured into a Sodomic basin, then the Spanish deathly thrash metal sextet Holycide is one to take note of, with 2 successful albums on their belt and the third one, Towards Idiocracy²⁰²⁴, released on June 6th (international day of Slayer) via the vocalist’s own Xtreem Music, hands down their magnum opus (excluding the 2023 EP which was their best record to date).

Holycide was formed in 2004 by Xtreem Music owner, David Sánchez “Dave Rotten” González (vocals) and Golgotha and Unbounded Terror frontman Vicente Javier Payá Galindo (guitars-2009, 2022-bass) and had a rough start with no forthcoming demos or records and Payá left in 2009 likely with intention to reactivate Golgotha (he will have returned in 2022). Undaunted and understanding, Rotten co-opted Miguel Bárez Lobato (guitars) and Daniel Fernández (bass) to independently record a 2 track, fairly unique and melodic if understandably rough No Escape²⁰¹³ demo, followed by a much better sounding Toxic Mutation²⁰¹⁵ EP which included both tracks from the demo in improved versions and which saw Salvador Esteban Barranco (guitars, vocals) and Jorge Utrera (drums) join the flock, overall an even more unique and engaging material than the EP, while wearing the San Francisco Bay Area influence on their sleeves and riffs, so the stage was set for the first full length made flesh in Annihilate… Then Ask!²⁰¹⁷ released on, where else, Xtreem Music. A predominantly very fast and raw yet powerful affair with almost none of the progressive transitions of the EP but with occasional slow downs foreshadowing the sequel, reminiscent of Dark Angel, Infernäl Mäjesty, Atrophy, Coroner, Sacrifice, as well as Sepultura’s “Beneath The Remains” (all of the above by their own admission) “Annihilate…” was an all around excellent debut, a bar set high for themselves, a true trial by fire for the Rotten, Lobato, Barranco, Fernández and Utrera quintet passed with flying colors, so there was no reason why the same five point lightening could not strike twice and that’s exactly what happened on the superior Fist To Face²⁰²⁰, featuring a wonderful cover depicting an alien battering Donald John Trump in Area 51 (Hangar 18?), an album which was as much a triumph of Holycide in the Spanish thrash metal scenę as the alien’s supremacy over that convicted criminal and adjudicated insurrectionist, but I hoped they would return to some of the progression of “Toxic Mutation” EP, which Holycide didn’t but did release a fantastic Bazookiller²⁰²³ EP, with a cover depicting an insurgent holding a head of a freshly beheaded war mass murderer, Vladimir Putin, (the title track single cover zeroing in on it with Putin’s forehead marked with “Z”, presumably either for “Zorro” or “zombie”) at the site of a totally devastated presidential Kremlin Palace. The EP consisted of 3 original tracks, “War Broadcast Live”, “Bazookiller” and “Modern Day Dictator” as well as a faithful cover of D.R.I. “The Five Year Plan” from Crossover¹⁹⁸⁷ album and was an excellent prelude to “Towards Idiocracy” to which we now turn.

Although the 3rd full length offers mostly more of the same, rough, very well produced (courtesy of Javier Fernández Milla and Davide Billia known for working with Angelus Apatrida, Beheaded, Posthuman Abomination as well as Rotten’s Avulsed) technical thrash metal with some well-fitted death metal seques, initially the album, recorded as Rotten, Payá (bass), Ancor Ramírez Santana (2023-guitars), David Ramos (2024-guitars), Avulsed drummer Santiago García “Gog” Arroyo (2023-drums) and guitarist Salvador Esteban Barranco (2014-2024), strikes you as a deceptively simple affair, a feeling which the good but not great opener “A.I. Supremacy” helps reinforce with riffs Dave Mustaine could have written for Megadeth between Rust In Peace¹⁹⁹⁰ and Countdown To Extinction¹⁹⁹² (arguably their golden era), where humans, thinking we could make robots so they can work for us, we make them so that we can rest, despite the fact that “machines almost think for themselves and much faster and more accurately” and soon they will “manufacture other machines”. But already the title track, with its ingenious “earworm” of the repetitive main riff that sounds awfully difficult to reproduce and its now Reign In Blood¹⁹⁸⁶ Slayeric now Peace Sells But Who’s Buying¹⁹⁸⁶ Megadethly transitions and solos shows that this a much more refined affair than “Fist To Face”, which, however, was already signalled on “Bazookiller”, but the real staple of the album is the fantastic “Remote Control”, with even better and catchier, almost danceable, riff and guitarwork and on a dime transitions recalling Kreator’s Terrible Certainty¹⁹⁸⁷, Extreme Aggression¹⁹⁸⁹ or Coma Of Souls¹⁹⁹⁰ as well Slayer’s “Seasons In The Abyss”, about how we, humans, are so gregarious we like things done and prepared for us, such as the false political right and left division (which is now clearly being proven in the U.S. in its unashamed almost unanimously bipartisan support of the current illegimitate occupant of the White House in his blatant adamant destruction of the Union). The next highlight is the excellent “Angry For Nothing”, a Belladona Anthraxian and Sousa Exodusy affair, with “Countdown To Extinction” riffs and with an excellent melody repeated thrice and RIPping solos. Of note are also the Outcast¹⁹⁹⁷ Kreatoric “Technophobia” and Psalm 69: The Way To Succeed And The Way To Suck Eggs¹⁹⁹² Ministry almost industrial “Power Corrupts” where Dave Rotten asserts that it happens to both “body and soul”, Human¹⁹⁹¹ Deathly “Lie Is The New Truth”, where politicians promise something before the election they deny by their conduct thereafter and “ideologies are above any truth and reason” as “we accept any lie if it suits our ideas”, as well as the downright death metal closer “Flamethrower ‘Em All” that sounds as if Payá wrote it for Unbounded Terror, where it becomes most evident that having a death metal vocalist on a thrash metal album adds heaviness and brutality.

While most tracks are very good and there are no fillers to speak of, 3 just don’t seem to measure up, of which 2 are originals and 1 a decent if a superfluous cover of Atrophy’s “Chemical Dependency” (from Socialized Hate¹⁹⁸⁸) where I actually prefer something that I almost never do: the original over the cover, plus the track distracts from the flow and the momentum built by “Angry For Nothing”, which I discovered by having a problem with it from the first spin (unbeknownst to me that it was a cover), too catchy in comparison with Holycide’s original material. As for the two originals I only kind of like, one I already commented on, “A.I. Supremacy”, and the other a Van Halennish “Pleased To Be Deceived” (howbeit with Payá’s cool bass solo) that made me think the same as for Megadeth’s “1,320” on the otherwise excellent Endgame²⁰⁰⁹ – they can both do better and have.

Notwithstanding my complaints, these guys clearly know thrash metal like it’s nobody’s business and, as on the predecessors as on the very good “Towards Idiocracy” Holycide sounds so confident in a “the mark of a professional is to make the difficult look or sound easy” manner that, even according to those who already heard some of the thrashmaster’s new material in the studio, Megadeth still had better take notice of this excellent, mightily skilled thrash act. Tour together? Only if Daves allow it.