Review by Greg on July 17, 2024.

With no hyperbole whatsoever, the upcoming album by the young and unknown Polish thrashers in Exist was literally my most anticipated release of the whole current year. After all, their debut LP In The Void We Last was, in short, a lightning in a bottle moment of balls-out thrash with a boatload of naive energy and jaw-dropping technicality, and I was, and still am, simply enthusiastic about it – easily the most unsung highlight of 2021. Go track it right now, nothing you might be doing at the moment could be a better way to spend your next half an hour. We'll catch up later.

Ready now? Fantastic. Let's move on to the review.

Thus, after three years and a couple of lineup changes that lowered the group's average age even more (new shredder Tymek Zadrożny is merely 18), we are now confronted with the guys' second instalment with Frog Bomb. I didn't know what to make of the theme, also reflected in titles such as 'Eco-Friendly Crocs' or 'Frogs And Hoes', but the couple title+artwork (which may or may not have been generated with AI) looked killer enough not to care too much about it... even though I was moderately worried about whether or not they could have managed to recapture said lightning twice. Without further ado, well, I'd be inclined to say no. Time to explain why, then? Well, that's not to discredit the quality of the riffs (the vertiginous 'I Am Eternal' and 'Unite' have plenty of the good shit, to say), and especially not the always immaculate soloing, of course – almost each song contains a solo that would easily be the career highlight of many bands around. The one in 'Crown Of Tears' is astonishing, and the one on the closer (a cover of an obscure '90s Polish band that starred frontman Kacper Tyloch's father Andrzej, also on guitars) just as stunning, but really you can't go wrong with any tracks, marking the only aspect that was truly reaffirmed with equal strength as the previous effort.

However, Frog Bomb appears to trade a bit of Exist's uniqueness for harder-hitting, but less distinct tracks – tracks that I can't help but think of as mere vehicles for the shredding, instead of killer proper songs with mindblowing solos on top like on the debut. Hell, most of them even end shortly after the respective solo, so it's safe to say I'm not that off track. None are to be considered bad, mind you, and the opener and title-track marks an early highlight with its smooth intro and outro nicely rounding off the whole thing, but it's also true that very few surprises wait for you outside of the lead sections, no Terminalist-esque blackened sections, no catchy refrains, and so forth. It's no wonder that the instrumental cut 'Swamp Sonata' (not a Kalmah outtake) is easily one of the better picks, a wonderfully constructed composition with skill and gusto, great stuff all around.

Based upon this last sentence, it might also seem I'm implicitly criticizing Tyloch's vocals, which I'd already considered a possible flaw of In The Void We Last. That was not my intention, but his evolution in this department was for the worst, sadly. While, in retrospect, his previous performance at least gave a different character to the music, he's now closer to your everyday modern thrash screamer. He hasn't totally abandoned his half-clean approach, for all intents and purposes, but there aren't even that many memorable melodies around, with the only 'Crown Of Tears' trying to do something in this regard – but even then, it's still no match for 'Chained'.

It's with a half-broken heart, then, that I announce that Frog Bomb is merely a very good album, but surely not the graduation with flying colours I was expecting from Exist after their incredible debut, which set such impressive standards for riffs and solos, not to mention fresh songwriting, that the guys themselves seem to have fallen victims of them. Easily recommended, but not without spinning In The Void We Last before or after it, unless you, dunno, basically hate metal?

Rating: 7.5 out of 10