Under The Influence #48: Black Rabbit on “Time Is Up” by Havok!

Talk of a particular sound being ‘dead’ as it reaches a saturation point is common place these days and when bands breathe new life into a genre it’s not always met with the nostalgic glow that you’d hope it would be. Formed in 2004, Denver Colorado Thrash Metallers Havok took 5 years to get their debut album “Burn” out but fortunately for to their sophomore album “Time Is Up” by 2011. Line up issues hamstrung the band but the determination of frontman and guitarist David Sanchez to keep going was rewarded as the album was credited as a big player in the New Wave of Thrash Metal scene.

Black Rabbit guitarist Hidde Holfland comments: “We had a rough time figuring out what album to choose. We have been through several line-up changes, so we had to think of an album that fitted to all of us. We (guitarist Jelle Bekelmans and I) were the ones who started the band and started writing the first songs for Black Rabbit. At this time, we were listening to the older thrash stuff, like Megadeth, Anthrax and so much more. While writing the songs for ‘Warren of Necrosis’, we started listening to more darker and heavier music, especially the old-school death metal. I for one wanted to hear more and more thrash, thus started to like the thrash with more aggressive vocals. This is where Havok came to us. While searching for some sick thrash metal songs, I stumbled across ‘Prepare for Attack’ of of their second full-length ‘Time is Up’. For me, this was the new-wave of thrash metal at their best. Very technical drum patterns and some very sick riffage. The ’’simplicity’’ of their songs got me thinking about writing songs, and this is exactly how we started writing. The songs just made sense, and we used that exact same technique. There’s some very fast songs like ‘Scumbag in Disguise’ and ‘Covering Fire’, but also some slower killers like ‘Killing Tendencies’. All these songs work up to their best song of the album, their title song ‘Time is Up’. This song is just pure f***ing thrash, and there’s no way around it!”

Warren Of Necrosis” by Black Rabbit is out now!

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