Vampire - Vampire (2014)

   The nostalgia trend of the Swedish metal scene lined up a long list of bands since the '00s, and this partly British influenced, but better working tendency proved to be pretty successful in the underground. Similar bands keep showing up since then and the audience doesn't seem like ever getting bored of hearing music made by the same old formulas.
   Vampire is one of those bands, and their self-titled debut dismissed doubts again (if there was any) about the validity of vintage-like records. Their music is like time travel back to the '80s, when extreme styles were just about to develop. Therefore the thrash metal they play also includes both black and death metal features in limited form. The whole thing relies mainly on the feeling. The combination of the melodies and the slight atmosphere is responsible for the blackened touch, while the tone that became more aggressive than thrash metal used to be, includes the touch of death. This kinda indirect solution determines the essence of all three styles, and therefore gives the impression of diversity, though the band just kept using the same recipe during the album. And it's just a recipe that was used previously by many. Despite the album sounds  ancient, the band didn't try to strictly mimic the exact sound of the '80s like how for instance Death Breath did. But the effectiveness of "Vampire" still could be compared to theirs. When catchy themes and melodies getting embedded into primitive thrash hammering basics, their importance getting overstated instantly. In general this gives the essence of musical minimalism in extreme metal, and Vampire did literally a damn good job by recalling it the way how they did.