BOLT THROWER Mercenary CD (1998)

By 1998 Bolt Thrower had already spent a decade proving that death metal could hit like an armoured column and still have more structural integrity than most of what surrounded it. Mercenary is the album where they refined the formula to something close to pure.

Recorded with a lineup that had found its rhythm after some turbulence, Mercenary is mid-tempo, grinding, and built for endurance rather than spectacle. The riffs are massive in the way that feels geological, and Karl Willetts delivers with the authority of someone who has read every military history book ever written and is angrier for it. This is British death metal at its most purposeful, still the benchmark for the war metal corner of the genre, and an essential document for anyone serious about the form.

Format: CD. Full length album. Released 1998. Country of origin: UK. Genre: death metal.

Fans of: Obituary, Grave, Entombed, Death, Autopsy, Napalm Death.