After re-recording their classic hits last year on the Thrash Anthems record, cult thrashers Destruction return to reign havoc with their tenth studio-album D.E.V.O.L.U.T.I.O.N.. As Destruction celebrates a quarter century of making music, this disc is exactly what you’ve come to expect from them. Good old fashioned thrash metal the German way!

D.E.V.O.L.U.T.I.O.N. offers all those characteristic trademarks that have made Destruction to one of the biggest German thrash metal bands these days. This album comes with a fresh new sound though. You can hear they chose a different approach to record the songs with producer Jacob Hansen. Overall it has a modern, but also clean and a tad overproduced sound to it; I personally like my thrash-metal a bit rawer, dirty and with sharp edges. That makes thrash metal interesting, right?

With this new approach Destruction dailed the speed back a little bit, but still maintained their intensity. The songs on D.E.V.O.L.U.T.I.O.N. are compact and brutal, but there is still plenty of melody with some killer guitar riffs in it. In addition to the shredding of Mike Siffringer, there is a guest appearance of Vinnie Moore from UFO on ‘Devolution’. Another song worth mentioning is ‘Offenders Of The Throne’. This song opens up with a bulldozer riff, which makes you headbang in a second. Killer riff! On ‘Urge (The Greed Of Gain)’ we find a blistering solo, played by no other than Jeff Waters from Annihilator.

One of the things that make Destruction unique is the particular lyrical style Schmier maintains. Instead of the usual, stereotype thrash metal lyrics, he rather writes lyrics with profound criticism on a social and political level. Never in a preaching way, but written cleverly with a dose of humor. A great vintage Destruction album with a fresh, modern sound to make it sound perfectly relevant in 2008.