Band: Maze of Torment Album: Hidden Cruelty Label: Black Lodge Rating: 7/10 Website: http://www.mazeoftorment.com BUY NOW!

Maze of Torment's sixth album, "Hidden Cruelty" see's the band distancing themselves further from the Death Metal side of things. The Thrash metal elements on their previous album, "Hammers of Mayhem", are now more pronounced and prominent than ever before. This new direction, now purely a traditional thrash style is decent enough but you can't get over the fact on how Slayer influenced they sound. Kerry King style guitar work and the drummer could easily have been a disguised Dave Lombardo. I'm sure that there are more than a few recycled Slayer riffs on here as well. Ultimately, being mentioned in the same sentence, as Slayer can't be bad at all I guess, so if you like Slayer, then you can't go wrong with "Hidden Cruelty". Even though you cannot deny that they must have been listening to a hell of a lot of Slayer when writing this one, at the end of the day "Hidden Cruelty" is a decent enough old school Thrash album from a group of very competent of musicians. Chris Rogers Back to Reviews