Riotor "Recrudescence Of Darkness" CD

Fantastic Thrash Metal from Québec, very intense, traditional and well played, support! Third album.

 4th full length album with 11 tracks of Thrash Speed Death Metal from Canada.

Oh, here it goes another 'classic' band of mine during Review Challenges. Canada's very own Riotor are back after some line-up changes that arguably had a greater impact than expected, 2022's Recrudescence of Darkness being their third full-length and first one in 7 years, after original screamer Ismarevil's abandonment, barring a curious re-recording of the sophomore. The band started out as an all things metal-obsessed thrash act with debut Beast of Riot, then upping the ante in the death camp with the occasionally pretty good Rusted Throne. Now that the new frontman Mikalcoholic has the chance to finally work with new material, how will this turn out?
To the surprise of absolutely nobody, given his delivery heavily reminiscent of the old black/thrash school à la Desaster, Riotor have fully embraced a very similar sound. I always found the band more convincing when firing on all cylinders, and flat-out devastating bangers like 'Onward... to Devastation', 'Turning Lands to Red' and the brutal 'Death Scythe' will knock a few heads off their respective necks with no difficulty. The blackened influence is felt the most on 'Matamore' and the killer closer 'Devil's Pass', which also made me discover the incredible story of the Dyatlov Pass incident (seriously, look it up if you've never heard of it). The sporadic traces of melody are the biggest surprise, however – most notable in the vaguely anthemic 'The Pigs of the Martyr' or the riffy instrumental opener harkening back to the days of old ('The Marshall Arts', anyone?). Some filler is still to be found, and 'United Metal Maniacs' makes up a particularly faceless opener, but that only reinforces the strength of the material that comes after, especially in the album's second half.
To be fair, I admit I've always remained attached to Ismarevil's character, either for his strained, excessive performance on the debut or his Lemmy-esque raucous delivery on the sophomore (which may or may not have been a natural consequence of the former), and I'll now reiterate my point, considering that, sadly, I wasn't that impressed with Mikalcoholic here. I didn't expect to discern all the lyrics, of course, but holy fuck his constant screaming really got on my nerves after a while, and his weird diction somehow made almost every vocal part sound the same. Which is a shame, since Recrudescence of Darkness marked the first Riotor LP that was consistently good, instead of only possessing a couple of awesome tracks, so I'll have no doubts in proclaiming it their best so far. If only they had sorted things out differently in a certain department...

Sample: