Traitor – Last Hope for the Wretched Review

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This week seems to be the week of the 1980s Metal sonancies. When I say 1980s I mean all the styles within Metal music during the 1980s. Each stylke of Metal music was represented here this week and the previous week by many bands with all their strong personalities. As far as I concerned, metal music is the only genre – maybe besides classical musical – where the past, the present and the future live together in a relative peace. Needless to say that the 1980s were the most insightful for Metal music but, perdon me the nostalgic I have to say that, Metal has been alive and well for more than 50 years. In these 6 years of Metal Addicts I’ve met such wondrous and exciting bands that made me change completely my mind. I’ve never a nostalgic but I did like a lot the 1980s. However, now I see that things simply changed as everything changes but Metal is still alive and well.

Ok, here we’ve got Traitor “Last Hope for the Wretched” a band that lives for the 1980s and does that with some grace and loyalty. Listening carefully to the album I felt some influences in it. The masters of Speed Metal and early Thrash Metal Exciter are one of them. Traitor aren’t that fast but vocals do address to Dan Beehler’s. “Last Hope for the Wretched” has one thing that lacks in many bands today and this thing is called finesse. Traitor really know how to put themselves into some really exciting Metal tunes with lots of finesse. It’s the Metal way of breaking evrything down with class. While listening to opener track “Sintroducer-Take-Over” all those qualities rise to the eye. There is such an impression of grandness in the track with the rhythm guitars giving the strong tones and the melodic guitars using a Delay pedal which emphasizes the melody. As I say always say contrast is everything in Metal music and Traitor really know how to deal with contrasts. By the way, “Last Hope for the Wretched” is an album that emphasizes the contrasts track by track. For instance, the three initial tracks bounce to the grandness of “Sintroducer Take Over” to the almost Thrash Metal a la Overkill of “Baptized in Fire.” In the middle there’s “Zed” which synthetizes both. The melodic guitars are a stapler of the band. I appreciate a lot the musical tension created in “The Last Black” and its very well solved chord progression. The kind of song that gives me great memories.

Traitor prove that there’s always a new way of doing old things. Their approach to the good Old School Heavy Metal is remarkable. A band that can easily combines the power and the glory in the same song.

Traitor “Last Hope for the Wretched” will be released on July 08th.

Track Listing:

  1. Sintroducer Take Over
  2. Zed
  3. Baptized in Fire
  4. Why They Fear the Night
  5. Anitietam
  6. Drifter
  7. Under Attack
  8. Raise the Black
  9. Luxury

Watch “Baptized in Fire” official video here: