Review by Felix on January 20, 2024.

The smallest neighbour of my homeland Germany, Luxembourg, offers an idyllic aura and is attractive to tourists. But as far as I know, it used to be a blank area on the metal map of Europe for a long time. Today, however, some aggressive guys are resident in the well protected Grand Duchy. The five ruffians of Scarlet Anger belong to this species. "Dark Reign" is the fairly ordinary name of their first full-length. It gives witness to the skills of the group in terms of songwriting and musicianship as well. The five-man-army has good ideas without overstepping the borders of their genre. That´s the correct attitude in view of the fortunate circumstance that I am talking about almost flawless thrash metal - the only genre which gives me the pleasant feeling of eternal youth. An illusory placebo, of course, but I like it...

Scarlet Anger´s musical forefathers definitely did not originate from Europe. The band is aligned to the glorious sound of the old Bay Area heroes. The musicians transport the original approach of more or less legendary bands such as Testament or Forbidden into the now and here. And the good thing is that the band successfully avoids rancid song structures. The guitar work convinces from start to finish and the drums make your head bang and your feet tapping. Another positive note is the fact that the band has no problems finding the right balance between melody and rawness. The well designed interplay of fast parts and more harmonic sounds works in an almost brilliant manner. As a result, the album´s flow is impressing.

This full-length has been recorded during two sessions in 2011 and 2012, marked as "Chapter 1" and "Chapter 2". But this does not mean that the record offers two different faces of the band. Scarlet Anger score with a homogeneous appearance. Maybe the second "Chapter" follows a slightly rougher direction. However, there exists no significant difference. More importantly, the high level of "Chapter 1" does not decrease during the album´s second half. This leads to the fact that I am not able to identify a throwaway track. In contrary to the songwriting, the clean production does not build a bridge to the past. The sound can be described as modern, transparent and powerful. Due to the domination of the guitars, the producers obviously knew exactly what is important.

Although thrash metal is undoubtlessly the musical home country of my European neighbours, the band also got a little hardcore injection. The often used back vocals and the aggressive shouting of the lead singer point in this direction. Finally, the album is mastered by Annihilator´s Jeff Waters. This is actually not worth mentioning. But if you still like to listen from time to time to the debut of these Canadians, you surely will enjoy "Dark Reign", too. The target group of the album is clearly defined, now it´s up to you.

Rating: 7.8 out of 10

Review by JD on August 7, 2012.

I see by the bio of this band Scarlet Anger, I have my second Luxembourg based metal band in barely a few weeks. I am thinking that the Metal Gods are trying to tel me something. Sleepers Guilt was my first band I reviewed from this very small country (Rating was 7.4) and I liked that one to a point, then I was handed Scarlet Anger. I put it on, and then my smile could not be quelled.

As straight forward as the music of Scarlet Anger is the explanation of what this band is will be easier still. This is without a doubt old school, balls fucking out, anger fed full out headbanging Thrash Metal played the way it was back when the Big Four were all not-so-well known and were hungry to Thrash our asses off and wanted it really badly to take over the hair spray shit that was calling itself metal. With this Luxembourgian band, you get all that Old Thrash goodness with a fresh set of balls driving it to greater levels that ever before.

Intense riffs, vocals that are a perfect balancing act between shouted and growled and a rhythm section that keeps the Scarlet Anger engine running on all cylinders. Good examples of their prowess are 'New God Rising' with its galloping guitars and thunder bass to the vocal explosive chaos of 'Face Of Evil'. These guys are the poster boys for the return of perfect old styled Thrash. Dispite at time repeating a riff a time or two in another song, this album flat out hits ever note like it was its last.

If there could be better production values, a little more experience and getting a major label’s push, Scarlet Anger just may get very damned close to being in the same league as the Big Four of Thrash. Nobody now could ever ignore these facts any longer: Thrash is not at all close to being dead, it is very much alive and growing stronger to take its place at the head of metaldom - as it should be.

Categorical Rating Breakdown

Musicianship:8.5
Atmosphere: 8.5
Production: 7
Originality: 8
Overall: 8

Rating: 8.0 out of 10