From the first riff I heard I was quite hopeful that ‘Born From Pain’ would quite frankly rock like a bastard. The song in question, ‘Sons Of A Dying World’ begins with a cracking bouncy riff with a slightly quirky underlying harmony that immediately grabs your attention. Very like the early thrash from the bay area but with much better production, this really is rather heavy. The only problem is, after the promising start the song begins to meander and to me always feels like it should step up another gear.

As most of the tracks are under three minutes this holds true for a lot of ‘Survival’, especially the opening track ‘Sound Of Survival’. It has a rather odd and lengthy intro, which heavily contrasts with the bands mission to provide short and fast thrash tunes. Personally I’m a big fan of short songs. If a band can convey everything they want to in a shorter space then so much the better. Although, this is much harder said than done and I don’t think ‘Born From Pain’ have quite mastered the art yet. I’m not saying these songs should be longer, they just need to be more to the point and would benefit from a more meticulously thought out structure.

There are occasions when the vocals sit really nicely over the grooving ruckus and the singer really manages to hold onto some emotion that so often gets completely lost with aggressive vocals. There are some points when it is quite appropriate to say… ‘By heck this guy sounds really pissed off’. Ruddy Marvellous. Unfortunately for the most part it just sounds like some bloke shouting some lyrics and perhaps losing a lung somewhere in the process.

Musically, ‘Born From Pain’ defiantly are more akin to American hardcore and thrash rather than their native European metal. The riffs are big spacious and catchy and these guys really know how to catch a groove. There are a few truly golden moments in some of these tracks and when it all comes together the sound is brutal. However the scrappy song structures and often cookie monster-esque vocals let the side down.

http://www.myspace.com/bornfrompain