Despite my love for thrash metal, the retro thrash hype of about a decade and a half ago left me cold. Most bands leaned towards the crossover side of thrash, while the pizza, beer and zombies lyrics were too juvenile to me. One band really appealed to me though and that was Bonded By Blood. Their over the top lead guitar mayhem reminded me more of Forbidden than D.R.I. and their riff work had a modern bite that gave them value beyond nostalgia. Last month, most of the line-up that recorded their sophomore album ‘Exiled To Earth’ reunited. Let’s hope they have another album that good left in them.

‘Exiled To Earth’ saw Bonded By Blood take everything that was good about their debut album ‘Feed The Beast’ and combined it with more sophisticated songwriting and a more balanced production job. On ‘Feed The Beast’, Bonded By Blood basically had two gears: fast and faster. The material on ‘Exiled To Earth’ brings a little more variation to the table without sacrificing any of the band’s hungry aggression, while the more complex songwriting makes the album still sound fresh today, eleven years after its original release. José Barrales’ voice is basically the only mildly punky ingredient in the music here, everything else is excellent, engaging modern thrash.

When I speak of more variation, that mainly refers to tempo and time feel changes within the songs. Even the mid-tempo tracks, such as the excellent ‘Blood Spilled Offerings’ and opening track ‘600 A.B. (After The Bomb)’, are situated in the higher regions of the mid-tempo range and have some scorching thrash metal sections as well. ‘Exiled To Earth’ is only a few seconds longer than ‘Feed The Beast’, yet so much more happens on the album, though it never gets overwhelming. As much as I would like to compare this to the development from ‘Forbidden Evil’ to ‘Twisted Into Form’, I feel Bonded By Blood retained more of its original identity in the process.

‘Prototype: Death Machine’ was my favorite track off ‘Exiled To Earth’ when I first heard the album and it still is today. The triplet feel of its main riffs is rather atypical for the band and drummer Carlos Regalado switches up the time feel multiple times effectively to get maximum mileage out of the riff work. The following ‘Prison Planet’ is another highlight. It’s faster and more concise, while its precise riffing would even make the likes of Exodus blush. ‘Desolate Future’ clearly is the most dynamic track here, with its clean guitar intro and interesting changes, but every track on ‘Exiled To Earth’ is very much worth hearing.

Unfortunately, the line-up that recorded ‘Exiled To Earth’ fell apart not too long after the album was released and the band followed it up with the shockingly dull ‘The Aftermath’ in 2012, which lacked all the energy, variation and especially the boatload of fantastic guitar solos by Alex Lee and Juan Juarez that ‘Exiled To Earth’ did have. As it stands, however, ‘Exiled To Earth’ is still my favorite album to come out of the retro thrash scene and one of the greatest thrash albums of this century. Now that Lee, Barrales and bassist Jerry Garcia are back in the band, all we can do is hope that they bring the excellence heard throughout ‘Exiled To Earth’ back.

Recommended tracks: ‘Prototype: Death Machine’, ‘Prison Planet’, ‘Blood Spilled Offerings’