### Struck By Lightning: Serpents

#### 20/05/10 || GardensTale

It’s amazing metal bands get anywhere at all really, artistically speaking. You have on average 4 or 5 guys, sometimes one of them cockless and with tits, all standing around, one shouting really fucken hard into a microphone, a couple holding a bunch of strings and banging a piece of plastic across them, and as if that ain’t enough, there’s a guy hitting a fuckton of plastic skins with two lengthy pieces of wood. Not only does this whole cacophony need to fit together perfectly, they all need to do it while being really fucken angry!

Okay, granted, this doesn’t go for everyone. Not all metal bands are angry. For instance, there’s progressive folk metal, which is mostly about how much they love trees. Or progressive power metal, which is mostly about how much they love manlove.

Another metal band that isn’t angry is Struck by Lightning. You see, maybe it’s a case of semantics, but for me, angry invokes this low, rumbling feeling of rage. Think Viking with battleaxe. SbL, however, are not angry, they are COMPLETELY FUCKEN PISSED. They are a bunch of punks who got so COMPLETELY FUCKEN PISSED punk was no longer enough to contain their rage. So the cup runneth over and spilled into the realm of the better D-beat metal, and through the magic of the internet wound up on my plate somehow, and fuck am I glad it did!

For those of you not familiar with the term D-beat: officially it comes from a certain type of drum riff that was employed by the first of their kind, the band Discharge, but even when not using that specific pattern in the drums, bands employing a similar sound can still be filed under D-beat. The basic gist of it is a COMPLETELY FUCKEN PISSED punk / hardcore metal base with a certain emphasis on the drums and no or very few of those fucken horrid breakdowns most –core bands suffer from.

SbL can do more than being angry, though. The way I see it, there’s three sides to them. One side is the COMPLETELY FUCKEN PISSED side, a good example being “False hope”, where the vocals shine in the chorus as he spits blood and venom: I refuse to see your fucking light! Then there’s the razor sharp melodic work that puts your teeth on edge, evident in among others “Widowmaker” and opener “Silent and still”. Then to finish things off, they’re showing off some skills in groove as well! Puts an image of a mohawked punk whirlwinding two spiked bats around. Awesome. Listen to standout track “The watchful eye” for this!

You might have noticed I’m pretty psyched about this band. You see, there’s so many bands that do shit half-assed. You get all this unbalanced half-attempts that just miss something or can’t figure out how to compose a proper song and balance an album to save their sorry lives. These gents got their shit all figured out: they want to be pissed and fuck something up good, and they’ve balanced it with good songwriting and musicianship. See? It ain’t fucken difficult!

By the way, there’s a special recommendation for all you drumophiles here. The drums on “Serpents” are high in the mix and goddamn it feels good to hear him alternate between blasting toms and kickass snare work. Again, “Watchful eye” for some yummy earcandy.

It’s amazing metal bands get anywhere at all, making sense from all the cacophony. Struck by Lightning, however, make it out perfectly fucken fine, perfectly fucken pissed, and rarely fucken fuck it up on the way there. Check this shit out, especially if you feel the need to use that spiked bat of yours in a street fight. There ain’t much better music out there to be COMPLETELY FUCKEN PISSED to.

- Information
- Released: 2009
- Label: Translation Loss Records
- Website: Struck By Lightning MySpace
- Band
- Gregory Lahm: guitars, vocals
- Travis Kline: drums
- Mike Leach: guitars
- John Peters: bass

- Tracklist
- 01. Silent and still
- 02. Nothing sacred
- 03. The watchful eye
- 04. Supercell
- 05. Widowmaker
- 06. Tightening the noose
- 07. Becoming earth
- 08. Bottomless pit
- 09. Collection of teeth
- 10. False hope
- 11. The herd