Maidenhead - Maximum Clonage

 Last Friday I was looking through my release radar on Spotify. And low and behold, there was actually something useful in it for once! Here is a band called Maidenhead, who I had not heard of before last week. And as it turns out they just released their first full length album earlier this month!
As I was researching this album it turns out there is a very impressive mix of people who worked on it. It was mixed by Randy Burns who has worked on a lot of great albums over the years including releases from Megadeth, Dark Angel, Death and Nuclear Assault. It features guest guitar playing from Chris Poland and Glen Dover, both former Megadeth guitarists. And the bass on this album is recorded by Rich Gray of Annihilator! That's an all star cast to have working on your album, I'm impressed!
Of course there is also the band Maidenhead themselves, each of whom have done a very good job here I have to say. The band members themselves seem to be around the same age as I am, which has me once again pondering my life choices (just to be sure, this is a joke). But let's cut the malarkey and get into this album!

At roughly 30 minutes we have a nice and fun short burst of thrash/death metal to get into here. And sometimes that's really all you need to make an impact isn't it? We start with a minute long industrial intro, which fits well with the general atmosphere that this album is trying to set. And then we go straight into the title track "Maximum Clonage". 
This song doesn't waste even a millisecond and immediately hits you over the head with exactly the type of guitar playing and drums you want to hear from an album like this. You can immediately tell that the rhythm guitar playing is going to be a major high point on this album. Something I want to point out here is what vocalist Zeping "Bella" Song is doing. She has a really nice mix of aggressiveness and flow going on throughout this entire album.
We move into "False Masked Hero" where the tremolo picking immediately gets you in a moshpit kinda mood. Then we go into "Death March" where the riffing reminds me a lot of the song "Climb Up! And Get The Last Chance!" from F-Zero X. In fact, I hear a lot of similarities between this album and that soundtrack. I wonder if there was some inspiration taken there. 
The next song "Kill or be Killed" has some really cool guitar melodies going on. There is a point where this album almost starts to lean into melodeath territory. Though it stays thrashy enough not to lose its initial vibe. I notice some interesting experimenting with the vocals in this song as well. 
"Magia Obscura" also feels a bit more experimental than the other songs on this album. You get the slow groove in the beginning where the bass gets its own little moment and then the rest of the instruments slowly join. It's very nicely done. 
With "Burst Stream of Destruction" they cap off the album very nicely before moving into the instrumental outro "Hasta La Próxima". That outro almost feels like you're going for your cooldown after a really intensive workout. Which is very fitting given the burst of energy that the main portion of this album brings along. Is this also a subtle hint that there is more on the way? Given that the name of this outro track roughly translates to "Until next time".

I think we have a very promising album on our hands here. With a first output like this I'm very excited to hear what this band has in store for us in the future. My personal favourite song on this album is probably the title track, but honestly I had a great time the entire way through this thing. And I'm planning to have that great time over and over again. 

With that I'm going to call this a post. If anyone from the band runs across this post, you should play here in The Netherlands at some point. I think Maidenhead and Stonehenge Festival would be a perfect match!

Bring 'em to the pit!