Speed Kill Hate are the pit bull next door who no one wants to mess with. Just look at the band photo in the booklet and you can almost feel them kicking your ass with their eyes, hahaha. Mixing equal parts of Machine Head and Pantera with a Hatebreed hardcore fist to the face, the bark is as big as the bite. Founding member Dave Linsk makes sure Speed Kill doesn’t sound anything his day job Overkill but nicely incorporates elements of the Kill’s classic thrash style in tracks like ‘Breeding Hate’ and ‘Written In Blood’ both in the riffs and tasty solos (‘Behind The Mask’). The voice also is very different from Bobby Blitz (and clearly not as unique), going for balls-out straight power and a street attitude. ‘Deceiver’ slows down the tempo a bit, trading off vocals between the lead and backing gruffs.

Given the riffing and screamed vocal, ‘Mark Of Judas’ could have easily been on Pantera’s "Far Beyond Driven" or "Great Southern Trendkill" album, and ‘Brotherhood Of Arms’ follows with speed and even more anger. ‘The Cleansing’ is probably the only one that is just unnecessarily fast and the vocals are way too forced.