ANTROPOID, Danger (2007, self-released)

The skull:
“Antropoid” is actually the Slovak word for “pirate,” and this is just one of the many signs you’ll see to alert you to freebooter crossings while motoring down the picturesque highways of this landlocked central European nation. Over the years, many of these signs have been stolen by Running Wild fans, and as a result, the crushed corpses of patch-eyed, hook-handed, peg-legged seamen litter the shoulders of many rural roads. Conservationists consider this part of the world ground zero in the effort to preserve wild pirates from extinction, but privately, most would express deep reservations about the possibility of protecting the remaining stock of buccaneers.

The music:
Sounding like a mix of early 90s Anthrax (at the dire end of the first Joey Belladonna era) and recent Metallica (trying very hard to be heavy, but sucking fairly badly), Antropoid are rather hard to explain. Why would a band try to sound this way, in 2007, especially? Maybe the better albums were too hard to come by in Slovakia, or maybe Antropia were just a bunch of kids who didn’t know what the hell they were doing. That said, though their songs are not very good, they play them with a commendable enthusiasm that I find unavoidably appealing. Antropoid might actually have fared very well in today’s flaccid rethrash scene, although they’d have to bone up on their Exodus and Slayer, but they appear to already have passed into the great moshpit beyond.
— Friar Johnsen