Beginning with the fast and ferocious title track and continuing into a nearly hour-long saga of chugging riffs, master drum work, and perfectly sung vocals. The album’s highlight tracks, “Born in Blood”, “Year of the Snake”, and “Trigger Finger” combine old school thrash reminiscent of Slayer with modern groove metal to form a bone-crushing blend. Several songs, such as “Time is running out” and “Beyond the Grave” have an early nineties Grunge feel reminiscent of Alice in Chains. Chimaira’s latest album The Age of Hell is one of its greatest.

With three members of the band departing due to family and internal issues, the band was left with half of its original members. The band was also dropped from its previous label, Ferret music. Luckily though, they were signed to E1 music, an independent label, in January 2011 and headed to the studio to record their latest offer.

Original band members, vocalist Mark Hunter covering the keyboards, gave the band its unique sound, and guitarist Rob Arnold covering all guitars and bass. Ben Schigel, the Album’s producer, provided the drums for the new album. Rhythm guitarist Matt Devries is not featured on the new album.

One new feature to the album is the larger presence of clean-sung vocals, as most of Chimaira’s are screamed. On the songs “Time is Running Out” and “Beyond the Grave”, the presence of clean vocals is evident more than ever. Although some fans may not completely adjust to this style of singing, it shows that the band is continuing to mature in sound. This maturation has been evident throughout their career: early on they played industrial-infused Metalcore, and have since become a modern Groove/Thrash metal band. More than ever on “The Age of Hell”, the band has matured even without the presence of three of its original members.

With six albums released thus far, the band is showing no signs of slowing down or disintegrating. The fact that only three musicians recorded “The Age of Hell” in such a short amount of time shows that the band is still driven to succeed. With the new addition of drummer Austin D’Amond, bassist Emil Werstler, and keyboardist Sean Zatosrky after the new album was crafted, the band has gained newfound energy to help resurrect their career. Anyone who is into moderately straightforward metal with a groove to it should pick up this album.