ดอนผีบิน / Donpheebin - สองฟากฝั่ง / Collision (1997) - Collision of extreme metal and ethereal folk sound - 87% (28/05/14)

Thailand’s most important thrash metal band Donpheebin finally found its very own style on their third output “อุบาทว์ – อุบัติ” or “Disastrous Device Occurrence”. After a live record called “Return To The Nature”, the band came back with its fourth studio record “สองฟากฝั่ง” or “Collision” that mixes energizing thrash metal with a few death metal passages and some ethereal sounds of nature with a few folk driven melodies.

The best example for this mixture is the opener “ทางเดินเดิม” or “Original Passage”. The band had always opened their albums with one of their best songs that would define the current direction of the band and that’s also the case for their fourth strike. The first track opens with appeasing sounds of nature and harmonious folk melodies before a vivid thrash metal song filled with well-done transitions and a couple of fresh and small changes throughout the entire track emerges. The extreme vocals seem to fit more to the sound than on the last record. Everything on here sounds more organic than before.

The band then varies between a few harsher and dystopian tracks and a few epic and melodic anthems. The short thunderous up-tempo banger “เลือนลาง รำไร” or “Fuzzy Faintly” takes no prisoners and the interesting instrumental breaks underline the powerful drum play in this song. The short “วิถีทาง” or “Pathway” hits a similar vein and sounds like a dystopian thrash metal anthem from the eighties. This song also contains what is probably the most passionate guitar solo on the album. In comparison to these short tracks, there are also a few more elaborated songs. The epic “สองฟากฝั่ง” or “Sides” shows in fact many different faces of the band. It starts as a dark and menacingly slow thrash metal track with discordant guitar riffs but as time goes by the track also shows its beautiful side with amazing guitar melodies and a truly epic feeling that only very few songs of the band have. “ก่อนจะไร้ซึ่งวิญญาณ” or “Without A Soul Before” even shows a few melodic clean vocals that sound great and come as a rare and welcome surprise. The band should have made more songs of this high quality. Fans of the band’s ethereal and nature bound tracks may be enthusiastic about the continuation of the “Return to the Nature” cycle that started on the first record. The final track of this album picks up the spirit of the original again and a final part can be found on the band’s sixth and last record to date.

My favourite song among many highlights on this album is though “เรืองรุ่ง” or “Morning Glow”. It has the soul of a pure thrash metal song but it contains a lot of addicting dark melodies. The almost industrial closure of this song took me by surprise and added not only a new creative note to the band’s sound but made the entire atmosphere of this song more credible and profound.

In the end, this record is one of the band’s most balanced and consistent releases. In times when the genre’s big names such as Anthrax, Megadeth, Metallica or OverKill released more or less convincing records, this band from Thailand definitely created one of the genre’s finest moments of the year 1997. Go and check this record out on Youtube!

Originally written for The Metal Observer