siLLy puPPy RUPTURE is one of the many newcomers from China who has been bitten by the head banging metal music bug. This band comes from the coastal city of Xiamen and formed in 2013 with only two releases so far, this debut EP titled DEATH TO PEACE and the 2017 full-length “Rise From The Mass Graves.”

While RUPTURE has become a full band experience and one of China’s more popular thrash metal bands with a few death metal elements (like early Death), in the beginning this was the solo project of Schtarch who performed all guitars, bass, drums and vocals. The band’s 2017 album though featured four more band members.

DEATH TO PEACE is a short intro to RUPTURE with five tracks that amount to 23 minutes. This short thrash metal experience is like taking a time capsule back to the 1980s as this is old school thrash metal all the way and the final track which is a Cranium cover “Nymphomaniac Nuns” demonstrates perfectly where RUPTURE has gotten its inspiration.

Given that China is only emerging from its multi-millennial cocoon of relative cultural isolation even though it has been open to the world for decades, it only seems to have started adopting Western art forms in the 21st century and instead of joining the world at the contemporary level seems to be starting from the beginning which in this case is the origins of thrash metal.

As a Westerner who has been exposed to thrash metal for quite some time now, this sounds fairly generic to me but i also have to remember that i’m not the target audience. There are literally over a billion Chinese inhabitants who missed out on the first wave of thrash metal and now have their own bands who are touring so it’s totally understandable from a commercial perspective why these bands are simply modeling themselves after established styles of yore.

All in all, DEATH TO PEACE is a perfect display of some of the more aggressive strains retro thrash only devoid of any creative stamp whatsoever. Think of this as a cover band and its golden but i very much anyone who has enjoyed the sounds of Sadus, Annihilator, Forbidden or Slayer will find this particularly interesting. This is indeed a very good display of thrash metal but hardly rises to the ranks of essential.