Nuclear Terror is a thrash metal band from Greece that has been around since 2009 but their first material to hit the streets is this EP, released in 2014.
The EP starts out with an instrumental intro, which is not named "Intro", praise the heavens for that. Besides that, there is not much to say about Dawn of Extinction (the name of the intro), it's basicly just a kind of melodic introduction that fades out. It breaks into the first track Nuclear Warfare, which is an okay track, but the vocals are mixed way too low and are drowned out by the music. However it seems that in some of the other tracks the vocals are mixed a bit higher, and that only adds to my confusion regarding what the hell was going on when the EP was done. Musically the sound is pretty good, I like the general sound of Contaminated Salvation and the instruments. Guitars got a nice bone gnawing sound and the bass is audible. The drums also sound pretty good but I would probably had turned up the snare a bit more.
There is some interesting riffing and various parts on the album that definitely have potential. However the mixing is not the only thing that works against the vocals, another problems is the vocals themselves. They don't quite fit the music somehow, even though there's not really anything distinctive about them. I would love to have heard the material with the vocals sounding different, as the vocals is really the only problem that holds the release back from really cutting through. When it comes to the lyrics it's not really that diverse, but pretty typical for a thrash release as the themes are nuclear war, killing and thrashing. I actually like the artwork. It is not over-photoshopped but there is some mistakes on the brushes in the corner and the bottom where the brushes has been duplicated and mirrored, and it doesn't really look good. But aside from that, I dig the cover, especially the colouring. I never really hand out highlights from EP's as they got a short running time, so just power on through this bad boy!
Contaminated Salvation is a solid debut release from a thriving Greek underground scene, which has already spawned great bands like War Device and Bandemonic. I hope Nuclear Terror can rise up to the challenge and overcome the problems that this EP have and get a solid debut album rolled out on the streets.
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