There are two kinds of modern thrash metal been played, one is the Trivium “Metallica worshipping with Emo riffs” and the other one is the hyper fast, ultra aggressive, on acid Testament with some hardcore sounding vocals… you guess it, Harm is the latest one.

The name of the band is short, the name of the album is short and the album itself is short, only over 35 minutes; but boy do this Norwegians carry a big punch, fast riffs slashing through every song with anger and melody, hardcore like angry vocals and the right timing for every solo, Devil really is the European version and a improvement of what the Americans are doing with bands like Demiricous and Dreams of Damnation.

Devil has two layers and that might be it’s biggest flaw and its biggest advantage for first time listeners of this NON black metal band from Mandal; the first layer is speed and sharp riffs, the second one is melody; they do tend to be very repetitive at times and that might bored you in time, but for a quick fix of fun thrash you can’t go wrong with this record, even though the drums don’t play such a predominant role the percussion still manages to keep the pounding alive.

The bad thing about this two dimensional layer as I was mentioning is the fact that after a couple of spins, you don’t find any “hidden” riff or discover another dimension in the songs, they are pretty much straight forward.

Reading a couple of other reviews before adventuring on writing this one, I discover that some people just don’t or cant see the “evolution” of some genres, some even say that Devil sounds like an Exodus bad reproduction, or “not quite as Destruction would do it” the thing is that Harm is faster, angrier and perhaps young enough to think that they can just play thrash the way they want to play it instead of following the footsteps of previous metal legends; off course all this always keeping in mind that there is a lot to work on, but the style that this band as two other that I already mention but are worthy of a second cite are trying to play (Demiricous and Dreams of Damnation) is the evolution of a pretty much dead genre for the past 10 years; just ask yourself this, when was the last time the best of the year album was a thrash record? So keeping that in mind give this band and this record a chance, it might sound too straight forward at the beginning but the simplicity of this aggression is the beauty of greater things to come.