I’ve been listening to this Scottish band a lot for the past few days. I think Holocaust is a very underrated metal band. In their NWOBHM phase in the early 80s they created a sound that hugely influenced Metallica, and wrote the crushing ‘The Small Hours’.

Some years later, the main guitar guy brought Holocaust back, and started the band’s most creative and valuable period. The Sound of Souls EP is the first release of this era. The band’s sound in these albums could be described as a blend between Voivod’s circa Angel Rat-style vocals and sense of psychedelic dissonant melody, and a blackened thrash foundation, taking their NWOBHM roots to a point comparable to a primitive version of Akercocke.

The highlights of this EP are the final epic, ‘Three Ways to Die’, and the kickass ‘Dance into the Vortex’. Unfortunately, all their albums in this era suffered from poor production, so consider yourselves warned :) Get the EP now. Btw, if you’ve got good rips of the albums Spirits Fly and Covenant, I’d be most grateful if you’d share them with me :D

UPDATE June 21st 2008: I’ve updated the link, should work now. Here’s a cool interview with John Mortimer where he mentions his Voivod influences and the way the Metallica cover of ‘The Small Hours’ helped make Holocaust’s revival possible.