After five years, Japan’s Kriegshog returns. The five year sabbatical hasn’t found the band making any drastic changes, but they have refined what they do. And, what they do on Love & Revenge is take the classic d-beat blast and throw in some stoner rock riffage.

In fact, here, it congeals better than it ever has for the band. Opening track “Void” has a thundering riff that would stack up with the best of High on Fire. Meanwhile, the band has embraced cleaner production, to a degree, and the fact of the matter is, good production is a great friend of thee banging riff. And the riffs do bang here. The cleaner production washes away the band’s former white noise sound and adds an added slam to the attack… I also like the homage to Celtic Frost with vocalist Masaki’s spontaneous “Ooo!”

Pretty much every song here charges forward at high power and high speed. Perhaps like High on Fire, and even Discharge, maybe a little bit more variety here would give the band a larger blast radius. That is, once in a while, why not pull back on the speed and let the heavy riffage really crush?. Or, once in a while, maybe go full on beserk Gauze sprint? Still, while the record may not be innovative, it does capitalize on the traditions that came before it and lock those into something exciting. While the band, and other bands, have done what has been done here before, it usually isn’t done this well and with such a confident hand.