The first time I witnessed Tempered was live supporting the mighty death metal worshippers Gruesome. After the first song though, I was confused as the crowd were chanting “CST CST” and I thought it was Tempered. After some investigation afterwards, Tempered are part of the Central Scotland Thrash collective intent on keeping the Scottish thrash scene alive. Tempered nailed it that night due to the fact that they play thrash the old school way. Sadly, after releasing their debut EP Greenwashed, the band nearly collapsed due to a turbulent couple of years due to you-know-what.
Tempered announce to the thrash world that they are alive and kicking with the release of their three-track EP Biowaste. Released through Macho Records (shout out to Kendo of BrainBath for releasing this monster), we start off with “Excess” which is a minute and a half instrumental. This is not to be skipped when playing the EP as this is quality Slayer/(early) Metallica worship of the highest order. New vocalist Craig announces his presence in this song with a simple growl that only gives a snippet of what his overall contribution to the EP truly is.
Next up, we have title track, “Biowaste”, which just simply blew me away. Everyone knows that I love my death metal but I grew up on thrash and “Biowaste” brought back so many good memories for me. When thrash took over the world, when people were saying that thrash was just noise and people couldn’t understand why people made such a racket… that’s what thrash metal is all about. This is well structured, well disciplined and well played old school thrash metal of the highest order. Opening the track is a twin guitar attack from Steven and Chris who can play at 1000mph with the best of them, backed up by the bass section of drummer David and bassist Sam. I don’t know how listeners are expected to have their necks intact after listening to this. Featuring guest vocals of previous vocalist Aaron, his voice enhances the song and combines two thrash vocalists in their prime. New singer Craig has certainly settled in well and with his rasping, gnarly and shouty style, you would think he has done this thrash stuff for years. I certainly wouldn’t argue with this guy if this is where his vocal cords could go.
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Next we have “Scum Vortex”, which has a tad of hardcore in it and maybe a wee bit of punk too. Having played this track on Moshville Radio a few weeks ago, I knew what to expect. If you were listening to the track for the first time, you would think this would be more more melodic than the title track and it certainly would appear to be for the first minute or so. It’s really the first time we hear the bass of Sam clearly and I bet it was his idea for this intro to the song. Then Craig’s shouting vocals come in, almost deathly in places, and all hell breaks loose again. 1000mph riffs of the tallest order, with drums from David that you just bang your head to. This is again a good quality thrash song to get all nostalgic with.
And there we have it. The second EP from Tempered. The only disappointing thing about it is that there are only two full songs on it, but Tempered have reassured us that new and more music is in the pipeline in the very near future. With it only being two songs though, you will find it easy to put the release on repeat and just listen to it time and time again due to the quality on show here. Well played lads and bring it on the 10th of December at Moshville Winterfest.
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Biowaste is out now through Macho Records (100 cassettes only)
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