Havok - Conformicide

“It’s 1984!” David Sanchez shouts on the ripping track “Ingsoc”, in reference to the turmoil and omnipresent surveillance of the dystopia of the famous George Orwell novel of the same name, and musically it damn sure sounds like it is1984 again.

I was introduced to Havok in high school by a friend of mine who had a similar love for classic era thrash metal. He showed me their first album, Burn, and I’d be lying if I said I was immediately hooked or even if I said that I now see that album as something much greater than what I first saw it as. As far as thrash is concerned, Havok did not come tremendously strong out of the gate and they’ve sat pretty low on my personal thrash totem pole. I’ve kept tabs on them simply for the sake of already knowing them and wanting to see if they ever put out something glorious, and over the years they’ve been steadily improving their songwriting abilities and solidifying their sonic identity. Having followed them, though not intensively, for 8 years or so now, Conformicide feels like a protagonist winning their climactic battle with the enemy against all odds and basking in the glory.

I’ve been talking a lot about thrash metal kind of taking the beginning of this year by force with veterans like Kreator and Overkill coming back with significant and solid (somewhat for Overkill) releases and newcomers like Power Trip and Iron Reagan keeping the flame of thrash alive with vibrant and classic-sounding thrash albums whose updated productions are the only truly modern-feeling aspect to be found on them. I was quite satisfied by the product of Power Trip’s most recent album, which came out two weeks earlier and thought they had raised the bar for classic thrash revivalists this year with their spot-on tribute to the straightforward assault of thrash legends like Metallica and even Venom.

If Power Trip’s new album was an excellent and respectful offering of worship to the golden age of thrash, then Havok’s Conformicide has put its listeners in an auditory time machine and taken them back to the glory of that golden age. I was not even a thought in 1984, so I don’t know all about making thrash metal mixtapes with actual tapes, but I imagine that if Havok was hypothetically there too, a lot of songs from Conformicide would be on a lot of those mixtapes. While Havok clearly owe much of their sound to Megadeth, Anthrax, Sodom, Sepultura, Death (etc. etc.), and while they didn’t exactly get such a firm grip on those groups’ writhing energy in their first couple of albums, Havok seems to have found that elusive jugular vein and drawn plenty of the blood of thrash mightiness to both embody and elaborate upon with immediacy like a guitar rookie who now plays their teacher’s licks back to them with both precision and their own new spin. Conformicide is album that has Havok actually sounding like a student strong and vicious enough to go head to head with its masters.

I feel like I’m really laying the flattery on pretty heavily for Havok, and much of that I think is due to having seen how much they’ve grown in the 8 years since their debut album and the excitement of seeing them blossom after weathering some difficult seasons. And blossom they certainly have, without a shred of doubt in my mind, so I have no qualms with showering them with praise for making what is now my favorite thrash album of the year so far.

I do want to go over a few of the musical details that I thought really made Conformicide such a stellar effort. Off the bat, David Sanchez seems to have improved his control over his large vocal repertoire; he doesn’t sound so frantic or at the mercy of chance when it comes to the high shrieks or clean singing, his comfortability with which he has significantly improved. Megadeth is, without a doubt, Havok’s greatest influence and the many Mustaine-isms that pop up during Conformicide’s 58 minutes (snarly spoken-word-ish vocal delivery, dual guitar virtuoso soloing, controversially politically charged lyricism) are handled professionally and rival Dave himself. Speaking of tastefully done vocals, the cheesy gang vocals that seem to represent early thrash (kind of like on Meshuggah’s Contradictions Collapse) on a lot of songs from earlier Havok albums, only show up occasionally on Conformicide and make a positive impact on songs like “Masterplan” (“War! Famine! Death! Disease!”). Instrumentally, the band sounds more practiced than ever and their speedy, heavily Megadeth-inspired drum-work and guitar shredding are at their best (not that technicality was that much of a problem for them early on).

The greatest improvement the band has made, however, is in their songwriting; each song on here sounds intentional, inspired, and uniquely crafted from the other nine surrounding it, which I could not really ever say about any of Havok’s previous albums. I feel like here is where I would naturally go through what were my favorite songs on the album and which ones didn’t shine as much as others and why, but there really isn’t a weak moment on here and I’ve only given the album five listens now, which, with this impeccable selection, has not been enough for me to determine what I would call my favorite parts, which says enough about an album with such consistent quality to warrant the blanket statement of “it’s all good.” And damn it sure is!

I think the only criticism that can be made of this album, which I’m sure a few intentionally snobby critics will be happy to point out, is that it is rife with thrash typicality in many places, but damn does Conformicide really make you love them, and I don’t think that equates to it being boring or unimaginative; in fact, making a fresh auditory dish with seemingly stale ingredients is an impressive and often unaccomplished feat. The way the band has gone about playing the unyielding thrash they do with all the corrupt-government lyrics and high-tempo-but-not-death-metal-tempo everything makes it clear that they are not looking to reinvent the thrash wheel or have any significant kind of critic-pleasing motives as far as being praised for “changing the thrash game” or some shit like that. And that’s what makes the album at its core so great. It’s just Havok thrashing for no reason other than just to thrash because that’s what thrash at its heart has always been about to such a great degree, and they happen to do it spectacularly on Conformicide. I love this album, and it’s rewarding to hear such a fantastic album from a band who I’ve been following, even though not that closely, since just after I started listening to metal so it is with great enthusiasm that I recommend Havok and the pinnacle of their efforts in the form of Conformicide.