Poland's Toxic Bonkers has been around for a while, with their first release coming from 1993. Just like many other bands from that new source of cheap labour, Toxic Bonkers (what a name) plays a familiar blend of thrash and death metal with a few nice grindy segments here and there. Progress is the band's new record, bring it on.

As far as "what does this band sound like"-isms go, you can easily hear some Max Cavelera (early Sepultura era) in the vocals, and guitarwise you'll here the familiar tones of guys who have listened to the previous mentioned band, along with acts like grind-creators Napalm Death and a little bit of Boltthrower. It's basically the nice mix of hardcore and death metal that most people have grown to love.

Tracks like "Manifesto" blast open your skull with the sound of a machine gun, followed by drums sounding like the machine gun. Borat would say "it nice!". The band is sophisticated enough to give us some nice guitar/doublebass groovy riffs instead of a constant assault that sounds like a jackhammer (like some bands in this genre tend to do). After almost 15 years this band knows how to write a tune, and the guys aren't afraid to experiment a bit: you can hear an almost gothic-like keyboard in tracks like "Geophobia". We actually get a didgeridoo on this album, something you don't hear that much in Polish death metal. Unfortunately, these nice twists don't add that much to the actual creativeness: The tracks are all well composed and executed, but it tends to feel a bit like auto-pilot metal with a few nice gimmicks on top of it.

Somehow the word "Polish" has surfaced quite a few times in my review. That probably has to do with the fact that a bunch of Polish people live in the house next to me, and they're noisy as hell. Just like this band. It can use a little bit more polish though!