God Forbid’s last album Constitution of Treason was a pretty good album and seemed like the work of a band that was trying to move out of the metal core box and into the straight heavy metal thrash field. I liked that album a fair bit and still put it on occasionally. That album also made me feel like God Forbid could have a great album up their sleeves and was looking forward to their future work.

Well, earlier this month saw the band release its latest album Earthsblood and they’ve managed to move away from a lot of the usual metal core shit. The strength of the band has always been the twin guitars of brothers Doc and Dallas Coyle and here too the duo takes centre stage with some excellent riffs right through the album. The two along with drummer Corey Pierce and bassist John Outcalt come up with some very cool grooves too and the lead playing is mature and tasteful from the Coyle brothers.

The Testament references from the last album are in full flow here along with a lot of Jeff Waters inspired riffing which is only a good thing. The only negative on this album is the vocal performance from Byron Davis. The man who put on a very cool performance on the previous album sounds tired and weak on the songs here. The band while not doing away completely with the cheesy breakdowns has managed to cut down the number of times they fall back on it and overall the songs work.

Empire of the Gun reminds me a lot of Annihilator with its riffs, The Rain’s melodic thrash is somewhere between Nevermore and Ritual era Testament while The New Clear is melodic but goes through a lot of changes in tempo and has a very cool lead guitar spot. The album looses a bit of momentum after Walk Alone’s Loomis lite shred with the last three songs taking up over twenty minutes of the album and not being very good. The title song stretches to over nine minutes and seems very bloated and the album closes with another lengthy song in Gaia (The Vultures) which is pretty good but still seems too long with its mostly mid paced thrash.

Overall, God Forbid has made a decent album with Earthsblood. The band has dropped a lot of the metal core from their sound in favour of a slightly old school heavy metal/ thrash sound and the results are good even if not spectacular.

Label - Century Media

Year of Release - 2009