Molotov Solution moving forward

His voice booms through the van, loud enough to shatter the windows if they weren't cracked already.

"This is not a threat," Nick Arthur growls, as brutal death metal pours from the speakers like a swarm of locusts. "This is a (expletive) promise."

Arthur's listening to himself vent in the parking lot of an east-side Starbucks.

Minutes earlier, he'd been passionately holding forth on the pratfalls of the U.S. monetary system and the volatility of the dollar.

It's this mix of rage, blast beats and The Economist that defines Vegas' hard-hitting Molotov Solution. Their peers are mostly obsessed with gore and girls, entrails and sex, and Molotov's fierce and pointed political acumen does much to distinguish the band from the increasingly crowded new school death metal ranks.

As such, Molotov has become a hot property of late, having been pursued by a pair of the biggest indie metal labels going, Metal Blade and Century Media, before recently announcing that they had signed with the former.

The label has a rich pedigree, having helped break Metallica and Slayer back in the day and finding more success in recent years with the likes of As I Lay Dying, Job For A Cowboy and Unearth.

The signing was a culmination of a trying year for band founder and guitarist Robbie Pina. Last spring, Molotov Solution issued a superb self-titled disc on Twelve Gauge Records, only to see the album quickly go out of print and the band's lineup crumble.

"We got to that point where we're going to get signed and all these great things were happening, like tours and metal fests, but then it all fell through and I spent the whole year putting it back together," sighs Pina, clad in a black stocking cap and an Ion Dissonance T-shirt.

Having recruited an entirely new lineup, Pina and Co. set out to write a new record in just two months. The new material makes it clear that the band has taken a substantial step forward on their forthcoming Metal Blade debut, due out around May.

A much more varied attack, with an emphasis on shifting tempos instead of a straight-ahead, go-for-the-throat onslaught, the disc is a big sounding record that incorporates some touches of melodic guitar work to go along with Arnold's commanding high/low snarl.

"The last record was very good, but it was pretty much all of the same style," drummer Jeremy Johnson says. "This record, it fluctuates a lot more, there's different grooves, different rhythms."

And this bunch will need to be different to make a name for themselves in their increasingly overstuffed scene, where death has never been so full of life.

"There's so much competition, it's hard," Pina says. "And it was pretty rocky for a while," he admits. "I can't believe we came out on top."

Contact reporter Jason Bracelin at jbracelin@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0476.