Review by Fran on February 19, 2022.

Bastard’s first full length was recorded live in Bunker Studios and engineered by Tarkus Audio Labs. The natural reverberation from the room makes a great impact on the mix of the album, which sounds very organic and old school as fuck. I’m not sure if the band’s name is some kind of tribute to Mötörhead but the vocals are a mix between Lemmy and Angelripper. The riffing is kind of teutonic as well, and the bass guitar is heavily distorted. A wise choice for a power trio, it fills the spaces when solos kick in and there’s no rhythm guitar.

Most of the songs featured in Apocalypse Now! are fast paced but there’s plenty of space for mid-tempo hard-rocking heaviness too, a nice hybrid between German thrash and the darker side of NWOBHM. Not every song features guitar solos but when they appear you can feel a strong Kerry King influence with the tremolo bar. In terms of structure, songs are pretty simple and conventional, they rely mostly on aggressive and heartfelt riffing and bad attitude. There are a couple of mistakes in the execution, live recording techniques give a raw edge you want to hear in thrash metal but exposes bands a little bit. Nothing that would take the fun away from the album as they are almost insignificant but they are there, nonetheless.

I recommend this album to fans of Deathrow, Risk, Living Death, Sodom, Venom and Mötörheard, that kind of stuff. Overall I think the album is pretty solid, musicians nowadays are so technical that you don’t hear raw and honest proposals like this one so often, paradoxically. The problem with the excessive use of music theory in heavy metal is that most of the time, experimentation loses the hostile and antagonistic qualities of the genre and its roots; Bastards doesn’t suffer from that issue. This record is 28 minutes long, 8 tracks directly injected to the vein, 100% headbanging material.

Rating: 7.5 out of 10