siLLy puPPy VOLT started out as a basement project in the far northern Alberta city of Fort McMurray in Canada but evolved into a veritable four piece band that takes on various styles of metal. The predominant sound is that of old school thrash from around the 1990 timeline with intense quickened tempos, aggressive riffing, heavy percussive drive and occasional shredding guitar work but this is more of a death thrash band as the vocal style of Ryan Mustard is much more guttural and growly than a typical thrash band. The closest thrash band i would consider is the throat wrenching style of Vektor.

The band’s debut GRAND DECEPTION was released on 26 March 2019 and not only takes on the old school sounds of thrash with deathened touches but also adds some power groove metal hooks as well. This album is a highly professional sounding one that crafts an excellent deathened thrash metal sound in 10 tracks. For the thrash metal riffs the most obvious influences are from “Rust In Peace” era Megadeath with heavy galloping riffs and occasional soloing but nothing in the lines of Marty Friedman. In the rhythm department these newbies have nailed down the classic thrash metal sounds but in the lead guitar department they are a little reserved.

While mostly an aggressive stampede of metal there are occasional melodic cooling off periods as in the middle of “Speed & Mayhem” and the beginning of “Tipping Point of Tyranny” which are more like how classic Metallica offered some clean guitar arpeggio services before ramping up again. The compositions are fully developed in the classic format with catchy hooks and excellent musicianship however nothing on GRAND DECEPTION strikes me as original in any way either. The band seems like its just getting ramped up as a new album is planned for 2020 and despite the fact these guys aren’t offering a new groundbreaking upgrade to thrash metal, they certainly do play what they have created quite well and this is definitely one to watch out for.

At this stage in 2020 an extreme metal band is more likely to engage in tech death metal than thrash but VOLT proves that new bands are very much interested in the classic sounds that made the 90s so damn great and VOLT does an excellent job of taking Megadeth inspired riffs and marrying them groove metal hooks as heard by Pantera or Sepultura in the day. The death vocals add a bit of grit and the production is really good as it brings out the best of the metal without making it sounding overpolished. Despite the derivative nature of the album, it still manages to keep far enough away from its influences to sound independent. For example has gotten away with basically copying and pasting Metallica riffs for much of its career. VOLT on the other hand repackages it just enough to sound original.