Metal Underground.com

If you're looking for fast, Slayer-style thrash, you could do worse than Legen Beltza's "Need To Suffer," which marries whiplash guitars with dark, nihilist lyrics. The vocals could be delivered with a little more style, but some will thoroughly enjoy Xanti Rodriguez's high-pitched howl-growl hybrid, I suspect.

Instrumentally, these speedy Spaniards are tight as a drum. Ekaitz Garmendia's guitars especially stand out, with the instrumental "Amaierarik Ez Da" giving him and guest ax-slingers Guillermo Izquierdo and David Alvarez of Angelus Apatrida plenty of room to stretch out in terms of melodies and solos. Drummer Iban Hernandez is also quite excellent throughout the disc, but he's especially useful on "Amaierarik Ez Da," helping bind several disparate guitar parts together.

The disc starts well, with "Vaporized" having a definite Slayer vibe, instrumentally. As fun as the light-speed thrash is, I was pleased to hear tracks like "Midnight Meat Train" and "Mutants From The Red Hill," which have some nice slow(er) sections to balance out the speed.

Lyrically, the band covers the gamut from horror movie stuff ("Mutants From The Red Hill"), to religious zealot terrorists ("Suicide") and the child molestation scandal in the Roman Catholic Church ("Church Burning").

On the negative side, the vocals from Xanti Rodriguez tend to grate after a while. There is some variety to be had, but mostly Rodriguez simply shrieks out the lyrics. It doesn't help that often the other instruments come within a hair's breadth of covering him up — but I don't know that it hurts, either. Also on the downside is the fact that the sound is a little tinny in places. I was also not particularly fond of the needlessly offensive cover art, but that didn't go into my grading of the album.

Legen Beltza's "Need To Suffer" delivers the speedy thrash goods, instrumentally speaking, but is a bit lacking in terms of vocals and production. Still, I suspect you'll be suffering from a sore neck after some furious headbanging on many of the tracks.