Phantom Antichrist

This is the thirteenth album by the band from Essen, released by Nuclear Blast on 1 June 2012. It entered the US Billboard 200 at number 130 on about 3,900 copies in its first week, and it won the 2012 Metal Storm Award for best thrash metal album. The speed and the chopping are what they always were, but the weight given to melody is plainly greater. On the title track, "From Flood Into Fire" and "Civilization Collapse" the twin guitars draw long harmonies under Mille Petrozza's roar, and the texture comes close to melodic death metal. "Mars Mantra", the wordless opening that runs into the title track, is part of the same taste for the dramatic. The title track also went out as a limited 7-inch single that sold out quickly, backed with a cover of Iron Maiden's "The Number of the Beast". The video for "Civilization Collapse" followed on 28 November 2012. The digipak edition adds a bonus disc with a documentary about the making of the record and a live set drawn from Wacken Open Air in 2008 and 2011, and a very limited metal-box edition was sold through the Nuclear Blast shop.