South America has never been a slouch when it comes to offering up hard hitting metal, particularly thrash metal. The Force came seemingly out of nowhere, though in the band's case this was with their 2008 debut "Possessed By Metal", with all the celebratory goodness expected from Tankard on their hardest drinking binge and the speed and fury of the pre-1986 Bay Area scene. If going by modern revivalist adherents for a point of comparison, The Force definitely has a lot in common with the melodic yet largely fast character of Fueled By Fire. In fact, if the drum tracking was a bit more clicking in character and the vocalist had a deeper and raspier voice, this could be dubbed a slightly fancier version of "Spread The Fire". And while the vocal assault of Miguel Mike definitely reminds of Schmier, if this album were to be comparable to anything that came out of Germany, it would mostly tie in with the earliest Destruction releases or the first couple Tankard albums where the early Metallica influences were still pretty blatant. The Force is thrash metal for those who love it fast, fancy, yet otherwise by the numbers. Their sound is a little bit 1984-85 rather than 1986-88, which tends to be the norm for much of the younger outfits coming onto the scene. And while the resulting forcefulness of this album tends to hit the listener like a sledgehammer rather than a jackhammer or pile driver, there is definitely something to be said for keeping an eye to the old school and eschewing a lot of the stylistic innovations of modern thrash while still taking advantage of the superior recording technology of today.