Even if you don’t get the homage to Peter Gabriel based on the cover to Nube Negra, the third full length from Chile’s Demoniac, you’ll feel that sense of restless exploration in the thrash band’s sonic assault. It can be a bit startling to hear where bands now are taking the genre I fell in love with 40 years ago; the music here seemed primed for a younger, more voracious mind. I can barely keep up, but that doesn’t mean I don’t thoroughly enjoy the attempt.

The first thing you notice right off the bat with the opening title track: these guys can play. Drums are frantic, locked in and accentuating all the change ups the guitars lay out, while the bass is free to reinforce or roam as it sees fit. Vocally you could see this fitting anywhere from gutter black/death like classic Sarcófago (lower register but the clear annunciation) all the way up to current peers like Mayhemic. “Marchageddon” is a brief instrumental, odd choice for the second track but it completely rocks and leads perfectly into the drum forward “Ácaro”. There are moments when the tempo suddenly drops for a moment, then lurches back to life with another Frankenstein-ed riff. It took a while for me to get used to it – at first I chalked it up to a kitchen sink approach to the band’s songwriting, haphazardly throwing riffs together and by sheer dint of will making them stick.

But repeated listens tell a different story. Starting with “Ácaro” the bass of Vicente Pereira becomes unmoored, exploring the edges of the spiraling ending doom section before lifting the entire band back up into the opening riff of “La Caida”, one of three epic length thrash tunes at just under seven minutes. In those moments I heard the thrash I always dreamed of, progressive in its many, many riffs (seriously, the amount of riffs on this album is crazy), but always retaining a pure thrash mentality. In that regards although very different in tone and approach it reminds me of DBC, a band I idolized as a kid for their Universe album, smart and progressive but always heavy without losing its identity.

Not that Demoniac isn’t afraid to do a 180° turn on a track like “Synthèse d’accords” and throw in accordion and horns atop its double kick thrum. Pereira’s bass is another highlight here, but equally important is drummer Carlos Pereira, who may be related? I didn’t do that level of research, sorry. It’s a great bridge into the next epic, “Grenada” which might be my highlight of Nube Negra. Acoustic guitar and mournful sax open and when the rest of the instruments kick in it’s unlike anything I’ve heard on a metal record before, a funeral dirge writ on a metal canvas. That said, I’m less enthused with “Veneno” which sounds like it runs out of steam about halfway through. Would it have made a good closing track? Maybe, except Demoniac end with a killer thrash track called, fittingly, “El Final”.

In the end there’s so much skill and technicality on display I can easily forgive its small imperfections. If I had to choose one I’d for the band’s previous album, 2020’s So It Goes. But no matter which one you prefer, if you’re a fan of thrash Demoniac are one of the essential bands doing it right at the moment, so give it a listen.