It’s almost an essential standard procedure that when you start crafting an album that you put your best material towards the front end of the album. It’s been a way of putting together an album for years and years. So when one comes across an album that is back loaded with songs instead of frontloaded, I have to applaud them a little. That’s one of the many reasons I found myself really digging into LOS SIN NOMBRE’s debut album, “Blind Leading Blind”.

These Swedish Metal mixers wound up in my listening pile somewhat randomly, but I couldn’t have been more pleasantly surprised. Running in the vein of fellow Swedes THE HAUNTED, LOS SIN NOMBRE come at you with a solid punch of Death/Thrash mixes that contain those slight modern touches (even some Gothic tones like the above mentioned band) that has found its way into most genres now. Their straight to the head approach of rhythm/riff heavy song writing contains quite a bit of charm despite some of the monotony that it can breed and I found myself enjoying “Blind Leading Blind” more often than not.

Of course, as with most modern Death/Thrash bands, they definitely focus on the pummeling riffs and beatdown drum work, both of which are well crafted on this album. I have to give particular nod to the sick drum work on this album as he throws in a lot of variety and little details that gave this album an extra layer to listen to throughout. It is its greatest hurdle, considering the style, to overcome was some of the monotony of the genre. The riffs tend to blend a bit too much and the vocal barking style can run a bit thin at times, but the band battles it quite well. They throw in some variety in their writing, like the Gothic tendencies of the “Enemy” and its slow building pace and the acoustic interlude “Passing Through” which shows the listeners that the band can indeed throw down some solid melodic work too. Personally, a few more solos would have helped even more in this aspect, the few that appear really struck me as being well crafted and well placed, but I find that they might have broken the blending even a bit more with more of these. Not a huge deal, but a nice detail I would have liked to hear.

LOS SIN NOMBRE isn’t the most original sound I have ever heard, but “Blind Leading Blind” is a great solid album’s worth of Death/Thrash if I’ve heard any. The strength of the latter half of the album is pretty impressive and their playing chops match their fairly honed writing skills. If you are a fan of the genre, then definitely check this out.

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