SPECIES (Pl) – ‘Changelings’ LP (Color vinyl)

A step up in every regard, ‘Changelings’ is astonishing in its accomplished precision and how much it manages to achieve within the scope of individual tracks and as a cohesive whole. The album features an overload of angular guitar warfare, traditional Euro-thrash aggression with a modern resonance, rhythmic percussive seizures, and intricate basslines that make their intention deeply felt, not just following the guitar but dialoguing with it in a way that offers a second melodic brain to the album. In combination these elements thread seamlessly to give ‘Changelings’ its colorful and uncanny vision, as if John Carpenter had co-produced ‘Rust In Peace’ behind the iron curtain. It’s bristling with sci-fi paranoia, alien terror and a hint of Cold War menace. The early convergence of Thrash Metal with Death Metal is also unmistakably present in the shape-shifting sound of Species.