Review by Vladimir on August 1, 2024.

I believe that the band Flotsam And Jetsam needs no introduction to anyone who is well familiar with 80's thrash metal or perhaps a diehard fan, especially since we're talking about a band that is highly regarded for their excellent musicality that's been coming with the package since their early days. Being around for over 4 decades, they sure as hell do their best job at keeping their game as strong as always, and now come the year 2024, they are returning with their sixteenth full-length album I Am The Weapon on September 13th, which will be released via AFM Records. The big question is: is this album a great testament to their 40-year legacy as a band? Stay tuned to find out...

Flotsam And Jetsam has always been persistent in delivering energetic and powerful songs that play around with various ideas, ranging from standard thrash metal headbanging to melodic performance with a predominant power metal vibe. The songs on I Am The Weapon truly have a sense of expressive delivery that nicely morphs into borderline heavy metal anthems, with a couple of solid examples such as 'Primal', 'Burned My Bridges' and 'Cold Steel Lights' that go for an epic approach in power/speed metal fashion, but you also have some surprisingly catchy rock and roll moments like 'Beneath The Shadows'. All the way through it's an action-packed adventure that keeps an even flow of entertainment, rocking out from start to finish with high intensity and ambitious firepower, never slowing down or losing their edge. Probably the strongest track of the bunch is 'Black Wings', a fantastic song that truly raises the bar even higher, while also successfully taking you to another place where you see the great events unfold before you reach the conclusion to this fiery adventure. This track in particular really embodies the meaning of "grand finale", because once you reach this point you truly feel like you are witnessing the major climax of the album that will put this chapter to an end with a nice payoff.

As I said before, the band plays around with various ideas in their songwriting, combining heaviness, thrashiness, and melody, with plenty of dynamics all around that keep things interesting and smooth. Even though the output of Flotsam And Jetsam has become quite modern over the past few years, this time going even further from their intense thrash metal days in the 80s that we all know and love the most, the album still manages to showcase how the band has shaped and matured with their songwriting throughout 3-4 decades, without there being an instance of pleasing the wider audience just for the sake of better publicity. Although the final result might not be everyone's cup of tea, you can't deny the fact that it feels fresh and solid from start to finish, especially since their overall direction on I Am The Weapon was open with expressing variety that further broadens their musical horizon. The only thing that really didn't flow with me is the artwork by Andy Pilkington, who has done a very good job on their previous releases from their self-titled album in 2016 to Blood In The Water in 2021, although this time the album cover looks way too artificial and I think it's due to the general issue of people getting used to seeing AI generated album covers that are in this overly polished 3D style with no life whatsoever. The overall visual representation looks fine, but the art style just doesn't flow with me at all, and I feel very sorry to say so because a band such as Flotsam And Jetsam can really do better than this. Luckily, it doesn't ruin the album as a whole, and it still manages to capture the general feeling you get from it.

Personally, I think that I Am the Weapon is worth checking out if you are a very diehard fan of Flotsam And Jetsam because it still manages to deliver a fairly solid performance all the way through. I guess it's safe to say that the band is still going strong after 4 decades of existence, and I think that this album encapsulates their acquired experience throughout all these years in the world of heavy metal music.

Rating: 8 out of 10

Review by Greg on March 27, 2023.

Every self-respecting technical thrash lover should get why this recent band piqued my interest. Not only their name contains the transliterated title of what's probably the subgenre's most hidden treasure (Аспид's Кровоизлияние), but they also come from Russia, and even their genre of choice reads suspiciously similar, although with a more prominent death metal influence. After a rather unimpressive debut EP, Critical Extravasation are now at their first full-length Order Of Decadence.

The seven songs contained here go further down the Death (especially around "Human"-era), or maybe Atheist, route that was only teased in the aforementioned EP Morbid Existence, and the vocals of Alexander Mokin follow suit, arguably not reaching the same viscerally hysterical scream of Kelly Schaefer, but coming close. However, the band doesn't neglect the occasional, inevitable nod to Аспид, for what said in the first paragraph. Talk about a trifecta of influences I can't really complain about. That also means that the band has improved by miles on a purely technical level, in the lapse of three years. Mostly the middle songs 'Feast On Dreams', 'Redeeming Flames' and my absolute favourite 'Doctrine Of Atrophy' make every instrumentalist stand out, be it the busy guitar work of Sergey Stepanenko, the ever-present bass of Victor Khaychenko, or the scene-stealing tempo changes of the drummer, who goes by the clever pseudonym of Vladimir Udarnov ('udarnye' means simply 'drums' in Russian). Both the first and last mentioned go all out Piece Of Time-meets-Аспид, with adequately insane instrumental mindfuckery, and I couldn't be happier.

I just don't think the band has nailed all the songwriting choices yet, and this is most evident on 'Redeeming Flames', despite its highlight status, since it has just about the two best parts of the album in the bridge – the reprise of the clean intro, incredibly similar to 'Кровоизлияние' while we're at it, and an amazing solo – only to hear a disappointing, heavily stop-start section between them, which leaves an unpleasant aftertaste. Nor I was convinced by the solo in the opener 'Waltz Of Hypocrisy', where the band, maybe in an attempt to show off a bit, periodically slows down the riff in a simply awkward way. The last couple of tracks also fail to keep the momentum built up to that point, despite the usual mastery of the instruments, especially the 'Там, где ночь'-like bass intro of 'Devastating Virtue'.

I might be in the minority by saying that my favourite Death incarnation was up to and including "Leprosy", but Order Of Decadence will surely be on the radar of many other metalheads' perennial quest (got it?) for some bands which happen to love the band's unique middle era as much as them.

*On a serious note, this album was also meant by the band to express their utmost disdain for the absurd situation still going on in that part of Europe we all know about too well, and shows once again that the majority of Russian people is far from endorsing this folly. After finishing this review, I later learned about the fact that every band member has fled from Russia and is now in a different country from the others. I really hope they're doing fine, and hope for this madness to stop, as any sane person would do.

(The album was already intended for release before the beginning of the war, if you're wondering.)

Rating: 7.6 out of 10