“Mind Explosion” is the second album of these German thrashers and the successor of their official debut “Flash Burnt Crucifixes” released in 2000. Personally I’d never heard of Final Breath before, and how big was the surprise that this Scandinavian-like thrash was descended from a bunch of Germans. “Mind Explosion” is a kind of mixture between The Haunted (music-wise) and the older At The Gates (vocals) and that is not so bad I guess. But here comes my problem concerning Final Breath: they can’t reach the high standard of Scandinavian-like thrash at all. Final Breath plays an infectious and aggressive form of thrash metal. “The Punisher” features razor-sharp thrash riffs and pretty angry vocals done by Jürgen Aumann, who replaced former vocalist Michael Imhof in 2000 due to continuous problems with his voice. And with tracks like “Mind Explosion” and “White Prison” there is enough to enjoy for the real thrashers among us, but still it’s not so tightly played as we’re used to hear from their Scandinavian colleagues.

“Mind Explosion” captures also some death metal elements with the tracks “When Love Turns To Hate” and the final track on this album “Careless” which, at the end, reminds me a lot of Hypocrisy. The sound on “Mind Explosion” is done by Andy Classen and raw but well-balanced, exactly the way it should be for this type of aggressive thrash metal. Maybe next time, with some more studio-time, they can manage to remedy the tightness in the songs. The ideas are present and now the finishing touch? Germany still doesn’t have a new band that can keep up with the huge amount of Scandinavian thrash bands who dominate the scene right now.