The Queens, New York based maniacs Sworn Enemy make yet another strike upon the hardcore masses after 2005’s “The Beginning of the End”. That album itself was way more thrash than hardcore music-wise. Well, this time around, if there had been any remains of hardcore, they’ve been completely removed to make space for total full on thrash metal. The opener “Ignorance” sets one question for the listener and it goes like, “Dude, did I just put on the new Kreator?” By the time the second song “Time for Rage” kicks in, you’ve already remembered that you are actually a Kreator fan and you headbang like it’s 1989. The tracks are fast, the riffs are taken from a thrash metal school book co-authored by Slayer and Kreator, and the lyrics are in the vein of Tom Araya and Mille Petrozza’s social commentaries. And I’ll have to admit that in “No End to This Nightmare” they even go death metal on us. Unlike my expectations though, the orthodox thrash metallers I tested the album on still found enough hardcore elements in order to keep avoiding the band like the devil stays away from holy water. Yeah, there’s still a few beatdowns that are meant to provoke a dancefloor fight with invisible ninjas. Yes, there’s some gang shouts in some chourses. That’s pretty much all the hardcore left. But when you think about it, bands like Vio-Lence do have gang shouts, too… As fas as it’s up to creating brutal songs that will make the fans mutilate each other at some show, Sworn Enemy have done a nice job. The album sounds totally convincing production-wise, too. So far so good, and we’re all happy. Now if we take the freedom to be more anal about it, we’d note that “Maniacal” somehow lacks memorable songs like “Scared of the Unknown” from the previous album. And pretty much everything you ‘ll remember this issue for till the band puts out another one is that it was thrashier and more metal than the one before.