Disastrous Murmur - Rhapsodies in Red (1992)

Another of the earlier Austrian death metal acts alongside Pungent Stench, I remember Disastrous Murmur largely for their hilarious, distinct band moniker as well as the gruesome and cheesy cover art on Rhapsodies in Red, their debut. These guys had a sound that, at the time, I found very UN-European. Sure, there were some parallels in that scene, like the earlier Atrocity records, but for the most part the sound developed here reminds me a little of Cannibal Corpse or Malevolent Creation evolving on a slightly separate path. Certainly more Florida or New York than Sweden, Finland, Holland or England. It's chuggy, ugly, and walks that borderline between the OSDM and brutality emerging through the 90s, with a guitar tone that sounds quite thrashy and choppy, and a few riffs to match, definitely giving off a slightly Eaten Back to Life vibe though I don't really think the bands honestly sound that close together.

This is very agile stuff with a lot of shifting tempos and gory, guttural vocals, but I find that the mix on this one has always detracted for me. In the way a lot of very archaic death metal records did, especially in the first half of the 90s. The guitar is sometimes too crunchy for its own good, and rarely is spitting out riff progressions that stick in my memory. The drum performance is good, but the levels feel off, with the kicks drowning out other stuff, making the guitars seem a little thinner. Also, while the vocals definitely have a pretty extreme sound, they weren't very distinct, just bludgeoning along with the dexterity of the death/thrashing rhythms and not leaving much more of an impression beyond their brutality. The bass here is audible, kind of bouncy and fat and blends in a lot with the lower drums, but I know there's always been a market for this style...I think Malignancy is an example where they took something similar to this and got a lot further with the creativity and songwriting.

I don't mean to sound totally down on this, because it definitely has some effort and intensity behind it and feels like a record that would have been more impressive for me had I been listening to it back when I first encountered Suffocation, Deicide, etc. Sometimes they get a rhythm guitar going which reminds me a bit of Death, Obituary or Pestilence and I dig those, but they will usually change it up too quickly before it can settle in. The occasional keyboards are kind of cool but they sometimes feel too obscure in the mix, except the intro to "Into the Dungeon" which rules. The lyrics are appropriately gross for the image that the band was conveying, and probably on the more shocking side for 1992, but musically this is an album I have to listen to more for its bludgeoning than the music value. It often sounds calamitous as if the young band was just trying to force rhythm after rhythm down your throat, and it just doesn't always stick the landing. But for 1992, it gets some lenience and is by no means bad.

Verdict: Indifference [6.5/10]

https://disastrousmurmur.bandcamp.com/

Megadeth - Countdown to Extinction (1992)

Rust in Peace is not an album you can really 'follow up', but since that had secured Megadeth on such an upward trajectory of popularity, they were certainly going to try, and I credit Countdown to Extinction for not only achieving the highest level of commercial success the band would experience, but also for not entirely cocking up the evolution that led to its creation, and not dishonoring its predecessors. It's not immediately evident with the first track that this is going to be a more accessible, polished and radio-friendly effort, but by the time it's over, I was left with that impression. Thankfully, most of the songwriting here is strong enough that I couldn't care, because there are still plenty of catchy tracks that would end up on any career playlist I could assemble.

The first three tracks are actually kick-ass, with "Skin 'O My Teeth" really tapping into the band's frenetic speed metal roots. "Symphony of Destruction" might come off painfully simple compared to Rust in Peace, but it's understandable why this became one of their biggest radio singles, and how it would actually foreshadow the following album Youthanasia with the mid pacing crunch, vocal effects, and focus on an excellent chorus. "Architecture of Aggression" is perhaps the highlight of the album for me, one of my favorite Megadeth songs, with some really amazing thrash breakdowns and leads, especially at the 2 minute mark, and a vibe that definitely could have placed it on the Rust in Peace roster. It's after this point where the results become a little more mixed. The band tries some acoustics on "Foreclosure of a Dream" and "Captive Honour", the former carrying a country vibe, but both do result in some solid metal riffing and emotional payoffs in the vocals. The closer, "Ashes in Your Mouth", is another personal favorite because it gives me a bit of a "Five Magics" vibe, at any rate it would also not have been out of place on either of the two albums before it.

There is some cheese present, however, in particular "Sweating Bullets", a song in which Dave's more conversational vocals really sound cringe and goofy despite the song having a solid, bluesy shuffle behind it. I just can't listen to this one and not feel uncomfortable, and there are a few lines elsewhere on the album ("Psychotron", "Captive Honour") that continue this trend. I thought the ship really sailed on this silly style after the title track to Peace Sells, so I tend to skip it as I'm listening through. Other than these few things, though, it's a pretty tight record. The instruments are reined in due to the more commercial nature of the material, but there are still quality leads throughout, and I wouldn't call any of it 'dumbed down' since there is still the potential to explode lurking around many of the corners of the album. Dave's voice is still pretty confident, but there are just those moments where he is getting a little too comfy with the crumb-sucking and lip-curling sneers and they sound kind of stupid against the more machine-like persistence of the music.

Production also feels more punchy, processed and digital, lacking the grace and packed power of Rust in Peace, and I question why they went this route when they clearly must have had the budget to replicate that one. But again, I'm outnumbered here, because this record sold gangbusters and for a lot of folks might have been their first exposure. Many compare to The Black Album, but I think I'd save that for Youthanasia, or Testament's underrated The Ritual, both of which strive more towards those heavy metal basics, that minimalism which might presumably reach a broader audience, for better or worse. There is still plenty of finesse here, and I listen to it as often or more than the debut or So Far, So Good, So What!; just a few songs that slack behind others, a production that seems a step below where they had been, and a handful of awkward vocal lines that could have been cut from the finished product.

Verdict: Win [8.25/10]

https://www.megadeth.com/

Vomiturition - Flesheater Musicians on Their Last Supper EP (1992)

Flesheater Musicians on Their Last Supper sounds like a title which might suffer from English as a second language, or Fingrish, but then again I find it kind of charming, and though Vomiturition's first EP was prior to them joining the Invasion Records roster, it already showed a fairly fun and pulverizing approach to death metal. Interestingly, this band didn't seem to take on quite a unique style as some of their peers like Demilich or Sentenced, but the tracks here had a loosely Floridian feel which felt like a bit of Obituary or early Death with a few nuggets of old Cannibal Corpse that might erupt from time to time. It's got a dingy, murky feel to it which definitely caries the charm of the old turn of the 90s death metal demo years, and enough talent in the riffing and drumming to at least pay attention.

That's not to say it's very good, as the band seem destitute for 'money riffs' that are earned by all the guttural barking, and crawling tremolo-picked rhythms. It never sounds quite as evil as it needs to be, and while it isn't exactly your garden variety brutal DM which was starting to show up here in the States, it does leave that sort of dry impression where you just listened to something that was muscular and forceful but not creepy, atmospheric or memorable. The production is fine for what it represents, with a bass bonging along in there, and thick enough guitars, but the vocals aren't terribly memorable beyond just the gruesome necessity. On "A Journey Through Life", they go for something slower and steadier but it ends up a little dull. But fear not, Vomiturition will improve over this.

Verdict: Indifference [5.25/10]

Root - The Temple in the Underworld (1992)

One of the best examples of parallel evolution in the black metal genre I can think of. While the Scandinavians were doing their thing, the Greeks were doing their thing, and Root was doing its thing, an immediately identifiable blend of thrash, heavy metal and occult black aesthetics that has to this day not really been rivaled or emulated. Big Boss and crew have one of the most spotless discographies in the field...perhaps not every album achieving masterpiece status, but there are few that I can't sit through and admire. Coming somewhere near the top of that pile for me is 1992's The Temple in the Underworld, a measured, creepy and ritualistic album which retains its freshness almost three decades after the fact. A band that was always a bit hard to track down in that most productive of eras, but with the Dark Magic of the Internet, none can now escape their gravitational pull...and why would any want to?

Doomy, expressive and inventive, The Temple in the Underworld thrives off its measured paces and big hooks, not to mention the enormous vocals of the incomparable Jiří Valter. Although he possesses some similar characteristics to the other notable black metal frontmen of his age, somewhere between a rasp and a guttural growl, he packs a lot more force behind his intonation, and when he hits the cleaner tones it just has this bombastic, masculine aura which feels like a stone giant howling down from the hillsides. But the guitars on this album are every bit his equal, with unique melodic lines in tracks like "Aposiopesis" and "Casilda's Song" that have a strangely uplifting vibe contrasted against the more freakish, wavy chants and whispers that Valter weaves between his more aggressive barks. Or how about that doomy, weirdo intro riff to "The Wall", swaying along like the morbid candlelight you always imagined this band would use in some ritual jam session. These Czechs sound like they developed their entire schtick in the cellars of some forgotten East European castle ruin, as part of some sonic cult that was hellbent on summoning denizens of the abyss through unique metallic compositions...and they STILL sound that way.

The album is clearer and larger sounding than its predecessors in The Revelation and Hell Symphony, with a richness and brightness to the guitar tone that marries well to the thundering kick drums which throttle along below most of the album's more intense moments. But they also dabble in ambience or their own take on 'dungeon synth' with a cut like "The Solitude" which is beautifully textured and quite unexpected, or the purely choir-based "Voices from..." which starts out timid until Valter just belts out this harrowing harmony that you can just feel humming at you from the dungeons. Acoustics are tastefully used, usually as intros to several of the tunes, but they contrast beautifully against the huge crunch of the guitars in a piece like "Message". This album is simply towering in all areas...maybe the bass doesn't do much of its own adventuring, but it sure sounds good throbbing along beneath the amazing guitars. Even among Root's own catalogue, this one is an anomaly of balanced dread and majesty, and there's not much I'd change about it. Maybe the full acoustic track "My Name..." goes on a little long for what it is...I enjoy some of the Big Boss ballads, but other than the vocals this one doesn't have much going for it. Otherwise, this shit is astonishing, one of the better albums in all of metal in 1992 and hasn't lost an inkling of its potency since.

Verdict: Epic Win [9.25/10] (the shadows lengthen)

http://rootan.net/

Rage - Beyond the Wall EP (1992)

It makes all sorts of sense for a German band like Rage, which is often tackling sociopolitical subjects in its lyrics, to pay some sort of tribute to the Berlin Wall, and though it took a couple years, you could view this EP as their way of dealing with that or at least referencing it, even if the lyrical subjects aren't unanimously contending with that. This is another of those short-form reviews from Peavy and company throughout the 90s that, in hindsight, has become entirely useless other than maybe the kind of nifty cover by Andreas Marschall who would use that decade to become the God of German Power Metal Covers. All of the content has been scattered about reissues of several of the band's full-length efforts, but since my initial exposure was to this as a standalone product, I will once again cover it as such.

The material here definitely melds in with the style of their post-Reflections material, where the trio is starting to regain a little of the thrash metal aggression and record with a cleaner, more direct, cubicle sort of production. Had these tracks popped up on Trapped! or The Missing Link, they would have fit in rather flush, other than the fact that they are mostly filler quality tracks which don't all cultivate riffs or chorus parts that are ultimately memorable. "On the Edge" is a decent one that I could remember not only for its presence here but also as a bonus on the Execution Guaranteed CD that I picked up. A nice, choppy verse riff melody and a galloping bridge, but it's still not top shelf Rage. "I Want You" has a pretty uppity guitar lick in the verse, something that could have shown up on Perfect Man, but the rest of the track is rather dull as it never escalates to anything that can complete with Manni's riff. I think "Last Goodbye" is probably one of the better inclusions with its savaging, hammering guitars and a chorus that at least teases that it'll be catchy.

Depending on which edition of this you got, you were treated with an acoustic tune or two, and I have to say with some dismay that this one really sucks..."Light in the Darkness" is such a shrieking and feel-good anthem on Secrets in a Weird World...but the clean version saps it of all that impulsive and essential energy, not to mention that the vocals don't quite stick the landing. The glimmering acoustics capture the notes clearly enough, but it just doesn't benefit whatsoever from being wimpified, it's an embarrassment that the band shouldn't have bothered to share with us, or the audience at this gig for that matter. On the Japanese version they've got an acoustic version of "Dust", which is a little better suited to the treatment, but still doesn't feel remotely necessary other than the band trying to feel good about itself for spreading its wings. None of the harder hitters come even close to this level of mediocrity, mind you, so it's not that Beyond the Wall is pure rubbish, but one would think with the opportunity to explore this topic they might have even pulled out the stops, written some great new songs, or a full-length even...this is leftovers at best, few of which are much good. The heart was in the right place, but the songwriting simply wasn't.

Verdict: Indifference [5/10]

http://www.rage-official.com/

Rage - Trapped! (1992)

Trapped! is the beginning of Rage's initiative to adapt a sound that might remain more relevant against the 'challenges' to traditional metal that arose throughout the early 90s. That sounds silly in hindsight, to be sure, because we all know that heavy metal fucking rules, always will, doesn't truly age, and has arguably the most loyal fanbase of any genre of music produced on Earth. But certainly there was an attempt by the Germans to bring back a little of the thrash roots, enhance their 80s aesthetics with a tiny fraction of groove, and create a more down-to-earth style which relied slightly less on the shrieking and speed, but still kept a lot of the flair and finesse which, let's face it, the Wagner, Schmidt, Efthimiadis lineup was never going to be shake off since they'd spent those fertile years mastering it. Now, having said all that, Trapped! is still fairly close to the records leading up to it, like Reflections of a Shadow. There is no material here which needs to adapt the grunge, rapcore, metalcore or nu metal trends that Peavy was happily shrugging off, but it clearly sets the blueprint for popular albums of their second decade like The Missing Link and Black in Mind while maintaining the vocal range and musicianship of its predecessors.

While I was not quite as enamored with this as the five (or six) previous albums, there is no question that this was still a Rage firing on 110% and loaded with ideas for riffs and choruses. Andreas Marschall crafted one of the best cover images in their entire catalog, with some spidery demon queen ensnaring the Soundchaser in her multi-limbed clutches, and the production is quite good. Maybe you're getting a little less of the reverb and airiness (other than Manni's lead licks), and a mix that is more straight to the face while still capturing a lot of the details mustered by this highly proficient three-piece. While Peavy is not screaming by default as he was on some earlier albums, his voice is still capable here and he can almost effortlessly lay those out among his raving, wildman midrange on tracks like "Medicine" and "Solitary Man". The drumming is excellent, with a bit more of a hammering double bass attack, and Schmidt is just as much a monster on this album as those before it. I didn't find the riffing as catchy on a 1:1 basis with earlier Rage, but the arsenal is still full and you're getting a lot of choppy little melodies strung in among almost all the harder hitting progressions, and there is also plenty of variation throughout, even to justify all thirteen tracks; you were still gonna hear something relatively new on each.

Trapped! actually ages quite well, and in truth I probably rate this more highly now than I did back in the day, because it's well-enough written, consistent, and managed to keep the band relevant against the changing heavy music landscape without abandoning its principles. The musicianship is as top notch as this lineup ever produced, and while some dread the 'mature' tag, this album is clearly more seasoned than the screaming excesses of Perfect Man or Secrets in a Weird World. That's not to say that I'd often choose this one over those to spin in the car, but it's another strong vertebra in the spine of a band that really should have become one of the biggest in the entire genre...I mean compare their career to mega groups like Metallica or Megadeth that wound up taking huge dumps on their audience, and Rage looks a lot stronger overall even if their highlights aren't always as infallible as a Master of Puppets or Rust in Peace. The 18-year-old version of me might not have held much reverence for this record, but the middle-aged me thinks it certainly stayed the course, and its detail-woven anthems offer lots of thrills that would be anathema to other heavy, power and thrash metal acts of the time, some of which were dumbing down their sounds to fit that 90s zeitgeist. Plus, the "Fast as a Shark" cover was pretty smokin' and they did it before a lot of others.

Verdict: Win [8.25/10]

http://www.rage-official.com/

Konkhra - Stranded EP (1992)

I can remember a time when Konkhra was poised to be one of the Danish representatives to that class of European death metal bands that broke out fairly big in the 90s...Hypocrisy, At the Gates, Dark Tranquillity, Dismember, Entombed, and so forth. The band has endured for 30 years, with a few notable gaps in productiveness, but they haven't quite reached the same level of stardom as so many of those peers that would go on to labels like Earache, Nuclear Blast and Century Media. I fault it partly to the fact that their sound seemed to my ears to drag in a little bit of blander groove metal influence as the decade rolled on, not distastefully so, but enough that they were kind of straddled for a spell between the realms of the more death metal diehard audience and the tribal mosh krews.

However, during their formative years, Konkhra was in fact a more formally death metal outfit, as you might be able to tell from the first few covers to their releases. Stranded was their first 'pro' release after a couple demos, a six-track EP of churning, chugging low end death metal with the exchange of guttural and snarl inflections that were made popular by Carcass and Deicide, although the Danes don't quite sound the same in terms of how they put their vocal lines together, and even add in a few bits like some spoken word alongside the roiling riffs. I can certainly hear a bit of Chuck or Martin van Drunen in some of the growls, but then others go with the deeper guttural. There's a sort of confusing, chaotic underbelly to this release which I actually quite dig, only it's let down by a pretty bland set of guitar progressions which just don't ever seem to manifest in the memorable riffs that were the hallmarks of so many of the groups we celebrate from the era. Several are informed by thrash chugging that collapses into sloppy tremolo picked parts, but while the spirit is there the songs simply aren't.

There are some weird noises flushed through some of the material here, like in "Stranded" itself, or "Deathwish", which I couldn't quite figure out as either some sort of badly mixed lead guitars or special effects. The tracks occasionally grow a little more coherent as the EP progresses, like "Lustration of the Need", but even then you're just not getting top shelf riffing. There are a few other highlights like the magma flow of the bass in "Spread Around", and I almost felt like one or two of the riffs in that one were going to deliver, but sadly the ideas here just weren't all that brazen, bold or interesting even by 1992 standards. Compare this to something like Invocator's Excursion Demise, which had come out the year before, and was a lot more thrash-oriented, but this material can't even hold a candle to that. So Konkhra was off to a cluttered, rough start with Stranded, a product of its time that doesn't hold up with the possible exception of the murky core that generates nostalgia for old basement and garage death metal demos when the medium was a lot more 'innocent'. But, like many things with age, this band will only get better before it gets worse.

Verdict: Indifference [5.5/10]

https://konkhra.com/veryfuckingmetal/

Prong - Whose Fist is This Anyway? EP (1992)

This EP always struck me as a rather strange, unfortunate sort of experiment, the main reasons being that 1) the track "Whose Fist is This Anyway?" isn't even present, though it would appear a couple years later on the Cleansing album. I suppose they could have just thought it was a clever title and then one that deserved to be used for more than just a largely throwaway label-filler release like this one, but in retrospect anyone encountering that album first would probably be confused when they were tracking this down from the limited catalog Prong had available at the time. 2) I just don't think industrial/dance remixes of tracks off Prove You Wrong was bound to work out all that well, and this sort of thing could have waited, again for Cleansing, of which the material feels a lot more adjacent to being techno-fied, industrialized and otherwise fucked with.

What's more, this is just bad...this is possibly the worst release in the entire Prong discography. The electro mixes are almost all awful, with few changes other than clanging and banging and annoyance that people would have only thought made for good industrial music in the early 90s. Okay, to be fair, sometimes they did, but the strength of Prong is the riffs, vocals and energy and it just doesn't benefit a track like "Prove You Wrong" or "Hell If I Could" to be fragmented off and repurposed like this. The latter is particularly bad, a series of boring beats and bass-lines that suddenly morphs into the proper guitar riffs and some heavily filtered vocals. Granted, that vocal effect might have been cool in the original tune, but here it just feels like a bunch of buttons are being pressed, and that's one of the critical flaws...'What would this part sound like if we added this effect?' is fun for dicking around in the studio with your buds, but later turning it into a commercial release in some wishful attempt to align with the KDMFMs and Ministry's of the world just isn't effective here. And ALL the alternate mixes of their original songs here are laughable at best, like the miserable 'Safety Mix' of "Irrelevant Thoughts", a song I happened to like a lot. And there are TWO mixes of "Prove You Wrong" which both suck...

Interestingly, they also remix their Stranglers' cover "Get a Grip (On Yourself)" so now it sounds like total nonsense, and then they add a cover of The Music Machine's "Talk Talk", which might be the best tune on here only by the process of elimination, but is otherwise mediocre enough that I'm happy they didn't soil Prove You Wrong by including it. They turn the song into a bouncing bore that doesn't do much justice to the original and certainly isn't interesting in context to the great material I enjoyed from Prong throughout the 90s. So basically this entire release is useless musically, a waste of 26 minutes. The cover image is kind of interesting, I like how they split the 'prong' icon into the three circles, but that's the most memorable thing about it. I enjoy the first five Prong albums a lot but this was a very unfortunate misstep which at one point had me dreading what might come after Prove You Wrong. Luckily, that turned out a LOT fucking better than I thought.

Verdict: Fail [2.25/10]

https://prongmusic.com/

Impetigo - Horror of the Zombies (1992)

Horror of the Zombies is not much of an evolution upon its older sibling Ultimo Mondo Cannibale, which is to say that it remains the most basest of death metal songwriting, minimal riffing that would make even Autopsy of this period look more complicated. But as I said with the debut, it was never meant to be. Impetigo celebrated the crudeness of the form to a fault, far more obsessed with how they dress up their tracks with lavish serial killer samples than they are at crafting any sort of nuance within the rhythm progressions, drums or vocals. For a lot of their audience, nothing more was needed, and if I'm being honest, I feel much the same provided that the experience on the whole provides some memorable atmosphere or guitar parts, which Ultimo Mondo Cannibale didn't.

But this album does. Granted, this thing is dumber than a rock. The chord progressions all seem like the emergent British grindcore gods of the late 80s being strung out and slowed to a moderate hustle, or crawling along with the first few notes that come to mind. There's a little more to riffs like the one that opens "I Work for the Streetcleaner", which seems like it could have wound up on the Death or Obituary back-lot, but in general there are painful few here that stand out among others. What gives the record its charm are the frilly, weird leads that almost sound like insects approaching your ears when they appear, because you're just not expecting them. Or the blunt growls and garbled grind snarls of Stevo Dobbins. The bass guitar is thick, and buzzes you like the swill at the bottom of the communal coffee pot when nobody bothered to bring in any new filters for a new batch. The drums clang and thump along like an array of pots and pans in the background, not to say that they don't catch and anchor all the right grooves, which make up well over 50% of the album, these sodden, loping, knuckle-dragging bludgeons that well-represent the gaudy undead crew on the cover.

The samples are pretty good, if you're okay with bands using them so often, and they certainly set the tone that this band loves its cult horror, murder and exploitation, which is in my estimation their most influential aspect. You'll recognize direct film references like "Wizard of Gore" and "Trap Them and Kill Them", all of which would go on later to inspire (and even name) many other bands, so these Midwesterners had their shit together when it came to their taste in the obscene. I like when they go even more over the top with the atmosphere in something like "Cannibale Ballet", where the drums set the stage for some warped, freaky vocals that seem more like some emulation of a soundtrack rather than a metal tune. Frankly I'd listen to an entire album of Impetigo engaging in such absurdity because it suits them well. The lyrics are solid, simplistic but effectively written with some ghoulish imagery, and there are also a lot of grooves on the album that still sound perfectly moshable by today's standards.

Like Ultimo Mondo Cannibale, this is so primal that it just doesn't age, there is some gruesome impulse at the core of all of us which can appreciate how straightforward this is, and certainly if you haven't heard the band but enjoy records like Severed Survival, Cause of Death, To the Gory End or The Dying Truth then this is a decent, if not exceptional gibbet of gore slathered in that old Wild Rages Records cheese. If your battered VHS and DVD collection looks similar to the local butcher block, then its a given. I don't always break out Impetigo's records as much as their peers from that seminal period of death metal, but when I do, I prefer Horror of the Zombies.

Verdict: Win [7/10] (making love to the cadaverous whore)

Exhorder - The Law (1992)

If nothing else, Exhorder's sophomore effort The Law is a study in how an album can be both simultaneously more interesting and less interesting than its predecessor. Wrought of the same thrashing cloth as Slaughter in the Vatican, there are nonetheless several components to this that mark an evolutionary process towards a thrash band that might have eventually resonated with me. The basic ingredients are much the same, but there's a slightly more clinical cut to the riffing. They were always fairly taut and semi technical in the guitar patterns, but here they seem to be going for a slightly more technical 'sound', if that makes any sense. Many of the progressions had parallels to West Coast thrash bands like the great Testament, Forbidden, Dark Angel or even the Heathen sophomore, but placed within the tougher context of their very grounded, constant barrage of aggression. The Law is a more 'musical' effort, with greater contrasts and dynamics and maybe about 2% more risk...

...it's not enough, unfortunately. While they've gotten away from the Scott Burns production I wasn't too fond of on the debut, the guitars here sound even more processed and tingy. This was not an unusual practice for this side of thrash, but the real issue is that as a whole the album feels so dry and boxy and completely lacks an atmosphere. Take something like Believer's Sanity Obscure, and place it next to this, and you see just how much better that album is due to the dark mood conjured up by its musical choices. Here it fees like Exhorder came into the studio with another set of decent riffs and got the bare minimum out of them. More reverb, more layers, more textures, I don't know what combination of these it would take to make this sound like more than an unfinished demo reel in places. When the whole band is firing on all cylinders and hitting some momentum, as in the earlier stages of "Unborn Again", it's a little easier to ignore, but even then I'm a little bothered. There are other issues, like the fact that the clean guitar intros and other segues on the album just don't really match up to the aggressive material, and some of the little experiments like the funky bass parts (also in "Unborn Again") seem like cheesy, ill-fitting ideas. Granted, the bass gets a little more distinct there than on the debut, but not in the way I would have liked...

This is an album which doesn't seem all too confident of what it wants. The traditional, woozy dark blues of the Black Sabbath cover seem incongruent with the faster thrashing, although hearing Kyle sing this one definitely sounds like a prequel to Phil Anselmo's band Down. A lot of the chuggier thrash parts throughout are terribly boring, where the more rabid neck-jerkers like "The Truth" seemed half-way to decent if they could only have stuck a few more memorable riffs amid the very surgical mute picking parts. There is plenty to please the mosh fanatic, but they simply had no capacity to churn out thrash 'hits' like a lot of their comparable West Coast brethren like Exodus and Testament were doing years earlier. Kyle's style still fits the mold of the music, but for some reason the mix makes him seem a little more isolated, separate from the instruments. Half the lyrics on this are pedestrian straight talking rubbish, the other half are better, but I guess I should just be happy there is no anthem to anally raping an individual until she's dead, which would have been as awkward and out of place here as on Slaughter.

In the end, there really just isn't all that much to recommend about The Law. We're not exactly dealing with some bumbling abomination of a sophomore. I've heard far worse...but I feel like the more consistent Slaughter in the Vatican will rightly retain the higher cult status as the years roll on. Not that I'm fond of that one, but this is a slight step down and sideways. It's just not one for the memorybooks, and the competition was simply too large, especially in terms of the songwriting on something like A Vulgar Display of Power. Love or hate Pantera, I often find myself doing both, but I'd rather listen to "A New Level" or "Regular People (Conceit)" individually than this entire album. Some proper thug jams, bro.

Verdict: Indifference [5.25/10] (I hear an ego bleeding)

https://www.facebook.com/ExhorderNOLA/

White Zombie - La Sexorcisto: Devil Music Vol. 1 (1992)

La Sexorcisto was a pretty interesting turn of events for the New York based White Zombie, trading in a lot of the grit and grime of their asphalt and trash-soaked Soul Crusher and Make Them Die Slowly for something more notably upbeat and accessible, which drew upon influences like groove metal, stoner rock and probably a lot of Slayer riffing of around that early 90s period which I hear a lot of tonal nods towards. Where the older material was more like a driving, dirty heavy/doom, and distinct in its own rite due to Rob's unmistakable, grating roadkill vocal style, it didn't have a lot of potential in terms of giving the band its breakthrough, which this record did in spades. While Devil Music Vol. 1 wasn't my own first rodeo with the band (I had picked up Make Them Die Slowly since Rob Cummings grew up in the town next to mine), but I can imagine for a lot of folks this was the initial exposure to their sound, specifically "Thunder Kiss '65" and its video which were popular and fairly well-rotated on the radio and MTV.

I had enjoyed the sophomore to an extent, despite its flaws, but for me the real attraction to Devil Music Vol. 1 was how it created this entire universe of horror, exploitation, smut and schlock and then seamlessly fused it to the riffing and vocal styles. It was like Zombie and crew created their own dialect out of Hollywood sleaze, creature features, pornographic kitsch, slasher flicks, Halloween parties, acid trips, and well-placed cussing, which was then offered up as an hour long language lesson you could bang your dreads to...or for the sellouts like myself, your freshly-cut High School graduation hair. There really was very little like this at the time...you can hear some clear inferences to the aforementioned Slayer, Texas' Pantera, who were also blowing up at this time, and perhaps a metal counterpart to My Life With the Thrill Kill Kult's seedy dance club aesthetics. There are samples and atmospherics splattered all over the record, expertly placed to give maximum impact to the themes imparted through the lyrics, and also a foreshadowing of the more industrial direction they'd take with their fourth and final album Astro-Creep 2000 in 1995.

More importantly, it all works so well together here that this quickly became a shoe-in for one of the most entertaining metal records of 1992, a rather barren year in many scenes, as thrash was on its way out to be replaced by grunge, rap-rock, and the ever increasing brutality of death metal. In fact it's STILL fun, a quarter century later. White Zombie were one of the band's that managed to ride out that transition, by honing in on simplistic, catchy rhythms, chugs that were often laden with bluesy wailing, Southern rock personality circa Clutch, and an image that looked like apocalyptic voodoo hippies had gone on a shoplifting spree through Vegas and the Sunset Strip. The music might seem a little basic these days, but it's also timeless, hitting climaxes like the wah-wah smothered lead bridge of "Thunder Kiss '65" over that unforgettable, evil groove. Sean Yseult's bass lines were nothing too special, but they have a good flow to them, and their audible presence in the recording helps to fatten up Jay Yuenger's rhythms which aren't all that leaden or heavy by themselves, ranging between slow to mid-paced heavy/thrashing to a semi-sludge sensibility with a slightly neutered production.

Ivan de Prume's also play an enormous role, steady rock beats pepped up with lots of cymbals and a feel like he's smacking his kit on the back of a pickup truck rolling down a highway, but if there's any real star here it has to be Zombie, truly establishing the syllabic and thematic blueprints he would stick to all through his successive solo career, a voice that feels like a posse of enraged bayou hunters on the trail of a runaway drug addicts. Harsh and goofy in equal measures, howling with sustain where a verse or chorus calls for it, but delivered with an almost funky pace and inflection, as if he were a reincarnation of James Brown that had watched too many John Carpenter flicks as a child and abused every substance available. His range is admittedly limited to a few notes and verse patterns that he uses over, and over, and over, but there are so few front men I can think of who leave who could leave such an immediate impression (for better or worse). Maybe Jet from Boston thrash hardcore locals SamBlackChurch, who was even more schizo in delivery, but on the world stage?

This really felt like something new had shown up. Even the way the lyrics channel these old racing films and horror concepts (like Richard Matheson's I Am Legend which is paid tribute by a tune of the same name), it seems so stream-of-conscious and lovably absurd, barked out beat poetry, heavily threaded with Zombie's timely uses of 'fucker' and 'motherfucker' and 'YEAH!' The lyrics in tunes like "Cosmic Monsters, Inc." and "Starface" are just incredible. The tough part is deciding whether I like this album or Astro-Creep 2000 better. That feels like a heavier and more existential experience, with some really surprising moments, where this is the more low-down, cheesy and amusing, the real catalyst for Rob's career in both music and as a film director. I can't be the only person who was getting psychic flashbacks to the songs on this record the first time I watched The Devil's Rejects, and even when screening the more recent, mixed-bag that is 31, I was mentally referencing this shit. I don't listen to this in full as much anymore, but it was a good time then, it's a good time now. La Sexorcisto: Devil Music Vol. 1 is just one of those metal anomalies whose shadow I am fortunate to get to stand in from time to time, especially around Halloween.

Verdict: Win [8.75/10] (you shook the devil's dig deep hand today)

http://whitezombieofficial.com/

Samael - Blood Ritual (1992)

Blood Ritual was my first experience with Samael. It must have been around the time I was 18-19, and the black metal selection here was still fairly limited; beyond Bathory and Darkthrone there were only a handful of albums I owned in the style, and while I might have read a snippet or two from a zine about this Swiss band, I purchased the tape largely on the strength of Axel Hermann's cover artwork and the fact I was digging into those early Century Media releases/licenses with a passion. It was around the same time I was first checking out bands like Tiamat, Asphyx and Despair, but among all of those, I recall having the strongest reaction to this particular album, which in retrospect is a solid step above the debut Worship Him in every conceivable department with the exception of possibly 'cult importance'. Note that I'm not exempting myself from that consideration, since the personality of the debut easily precludes it from the near-mediocrity of its riffing, but Blood Ritual even gets that right.

This is probably the last of Samael's recordings to heavily feature the influence of their countrymen Celtic Frost/Hellhammer, contorted into an evil and grainy guitar tone that is immediately more appealing to me than the dryer, reverbed rhythm guitars on Worship Him. Construction of the chords and chugged mutes here is not only flavored with a mildly more unpredictable, vile sense of purpose which embraces a slightly more black/thrash balance than on the prior album, which was overtly a marriage of heavy/doom metal with the emergent black metal of Europe. Don't worry, there are still strong traces of that style here, on plodding tunes like "Macabre Operetta" which almost feel like outtakes from the debut, but even there the riffing, while predictable has a richer sense to it through the tone, and the slightly better bass lines support the guitars. Blood Ritual also maintains that steady, warlike pacing akin to Bathory and Barathrum, but tunes like "Beyond the Nothingness" and the title track definitely bring out a stronger presence of inspirations like Slayer and Obituary, with the rich palm muting, evil dynamics and potential to occasionally explode into a faster, pent up rage falling somewhere between the more plebeian Teutonic and Bay Area thrash 6-8 years prior. They don't stick or sink every riff on the thing, but the tunes are better balanced, more melodic and I certainly find it easier to recount them on an individual basis than the band's 80s-penned material.

One other area where the sophomore exceeds its forebear is in Xytras' growing abilities in sheer composition. Piano and ambient interludes abound here, offering deeper immersion into the nihilism and blasphemy which compels the lyrics. This is an important foreshadowing for most of the future albums in their catalog, specifically the next two after this, which for me represent the band' creative and qualitative summit. But due to the clear, superior production, the cleaner instruments really mesh well into the heavier pieces, which don't rely so much on atmosphere to squeeze by, but the richness and polish and warlike confidence of numbers like "With the Gleam of the Torches", "Beyond the Nothingness", or "After the Sepulture" which I'm led to believe is probably the most popular single tune from this disc. While I would define Blood Ritual as blackened, simplistic thrash with a lot of emphasis on the rhythm instruments and regal/infernal bombast, it also offers a slightly less bestial, messy and incendiary vision of the style than a lot of the other stuff which was coming out through labels like Osmose. This is a disc which almost always takes its time, allowing Vorphalack's hybrid of rasping and growling to offer more of a narrative context than raving lunacy.

Consistent enough that I find it somewhat difficult to choose favorites, this shares with the debut that sense of  timelessness. It's quite rudimentary, fundamental, and I can't imagine it could benefit from having a more contemporary production upgrade. Ironically, a band that often reminds me of this period of Samael is Triptykon, who often writes what in this era feel like pretty bland riffs, steeped in this crushing, massive modern tone which explains about 90% of hype for it. Tom G. Warrior seems to have taken a page from the very band that emulated his own alma maters, but despite the lack of age and rust upon this thing, I'm not sure the riffs here would be quite so interesting had Blood Ritual come out in the 21st century. For its day, this was a rather unique recording...apart from the Greeks, and a few crude American acts, much of black metal was heading in a more accelerated and intricate direction. Samael shared some of the symphonic inspirations with several of the German and Scandinavian second wavers, but how they structured the riffs and grooves in their material was more distinctly linked to that lumbering low-fi thrash and speed metal of the 80s. Blood Ritual would soon be eclipsed by the excellence of the band's continued developments, but this still remains one of their finest albums, and easily the best looking.

Verdict: Win [8.75/10] (where suffering is the only satisfaction)

http://www.samael.info/Above/index.html

Asphyx - Last One on Earth (1992)

Last One on Earth immediately trumps its predecessor by effectively face-planting it into war-torn concrete and then stamping on it repeatedly while beating on its own chest. Admittedly, there is still a bleed-through of somewhat uninteresting riffing progressions, and this is not a record which I rank among the most highly prized gems of that 1987-1993 epoch of 'classic death metal', but it says a lot that it remains my favorite Asphyx record to this day, even more so than efforts like Death...the Brutal Way or Deathhammer which have transplanted its aggressive formula into the universe of contemporary production standards that, frankly, make a lot of older, low budgeted records sound like you're hearing them through a sewer grate. Granted, my favorite 'Asphyx' albums are called ...of Frost and War and On Divine Winds, but take that as you will, because without the existence of this sophomore (and Bolt Thrower), we wouldn't have gotten those. This was also the final Asphyx album to team up Martin van Drunen, Eric Daniels, and Bog Bagchus...all would be a part of the lineup in the future, and reunite for the Grand Supreme Blood Court debut, but Last One on Earth really marks the end of that 'classic' tenure and deserves some respect.

Not that it can't cultivate that dignity through its musical value alone, for where The Rack often presented some rather dry, lackluster compositional scenarios, Last One on Earth is simply more exciting and more coherent an experience, on which the instruments and vocals gel together far better. Ron van Pol's bass lines are far more caustic and fuzzy, potent enough to drive home the lyrical themes and stand up to the rhythm guitar tone which once dominated them a bit much on the debut. Speaking of which, Daniels doesn't detract from any of the crunch of the prior effort, but here the chords really club the listener in the gut, and the Death style tremolo riffing sequences in tunes like "M.S. Bismarck" help remind one why they were so cool in the 80s. Drums still retain a lot of that rock stability, with lurching and minimalistic grooves to accompany the death/doom progressions that litter the landscape, but again they seem mixed a little better in balance with the other performances, and in union the three players give off an impression of a rusted tank of veterans just trying to win a battle by any ugly means necessary. Van Drunen's vocals aren't a hell of a lot different than Consuming Impulse or The Rack, unless you count that he seems to strain himself into an even more pained and bloody pulp, but really he's got such a tremendous presence anywhere that he doesn't exactly need to change up what he's doing. Very peculiar when you consider that there was some disconnect among the band members by this time. I'm not sure if he was even with the other guys when recording it, but somehow the record is completely cohesive despite that.

When it comes down to the riffing alone, this isn't the most exemplary or intricate in terms of construction or constitution, and yet it's clearly more passionate in execution than the debut, which felt a little haphazard and lazy in places. There are some brutally barebones death/doom groove patterns here in tunes like "The Krusher" which I find somewhat boring today, and also felt underwhelmed by when I was 18 and this was released. But it's really about perspective. Some people might find ghost stories frightening, or being in the dark spooky, or being jumped by a 90 lbs-when-soaking-wet schizoid crack addict intimidating, but to others among us, that's Thursday. That's lunch. Hell, if Last One on Earth had been one of my first death metal albums, I might have found it fresher and more menacing upon listening, but having already been into the genre when records like Leprosy and Realm of Chaos arrived I can't say it matches up. There's no creepiness in the processions of notes to rival the former, and as an example of a paean to desolate fields of conquest and genocide, the latter HAS no equal. Mental Funeral had really done what this record does better the year before. So, while the Asphyx sophomore is clearly comparable to such company, it just doesn't possess the stickiest riffs or atmosphere to keep me addicted. But it does fucking try, and that's why if you were to approach and ask me to opine on the career of these Dutchmen, I'd pass you this CD and then inquire you to tell me.

I wouldn't want to pigeonhole Last One on Earth entirely into that 'war metal' suburb of the death genre, because not all the lyrics here revolve around that specific subject matter, for instance "Food for the Ignorant" seems to expand upon the Axel Hermann cover artwork; but clearly tunes like "M.S. Bismarck" "Asphyx (Forgotten War") and "Serenade in Lead" deal in the specifics of conflicts and/or gunfire rampages, and this as a whole (along with Bolt Thrower) was an influence further fleshed out in Hail of Bullets, or other lesser known bands like Invasion. So there is some significance to its position in extreme metal history, beyond the fact that it's a pretty good time if you want to throw your mind away for a few minutes and just revel in the roiling riffs, doomed interludes, and ghoulish vocalizations that define pieces like "Streams of Ancient Wisdom" and "The Incarnation of Lust". If I break it down much further, the notes only occasionally move in compelling directions, perhaps too evenly dispersed between the slower and faster content, with no unexpected choices ever happening by even 1992 standards. That said, some albums are not meant to revolutionize the world, merely to catalyze its transformation into inevitable ash. Last One on Earth, if the name doesn't already give it away, belongs to that camp. Not as important to me as its peers of the time (Testimony of the Ancients, Cross the Styx, Shadows, Mindloss, etc), but you could do a lot worse than lounge out in its measured violence.

Verdict: Win [7.75/10] (paradise long gone)

http://www.asphyx.nl/

Asphyx - Crush the Cenotaph EP (1992)

Conceptually, the Crush the Cenotaph EP was an opportunity to draw on a few of the older Asphyx tracks (from the 1989 demo of the same title), re-recording both the music and vocals with Martin van Drunen; to also give the fans a sampling of what was to come on their sophomore Last One on Earth, and lastly, slap on a few live offerings. So at the time, one might consider it a sort of 'past, present and future' celebration during a time when this was quite a standard setup for the EP format, across multiple musical genres. Of course, this often led to a feeling of disjointedness when listening through, since the audio quality was very unlikely to be consistent, thus I'm not the biggest fan of these short players unless all the content is on the same 'page': new studio material, all-live, all re-recordings, etc. But I probably threw down only about 4-5 USD on this in a bargain bin somewhere, mainly to experience more van Drunen vocals and because I though Axel Hermann's artwork was quite sick. Otherwise, my expectations for this were pretty humble...but not met regardless.

Production-wise (courtesy of Waldemar Sorychta), I actually enjoyed the re-recorded versions of "Crush the Cenotaph"  and "Rite of Shades" more than anything off The Rack, largely because the guitars seemed a little more rich and robust in tone, if sacrificing some of the futile fuzz and tension off the full-length for clarity. Thanks to this decision, Martin's ghoulish vocals seemed to splatter all over the rhythm tracks like viscera to a polished and sharpened knife, and I also felt like Bob Bagchus' drums stood out more evenly than the album. Bass is roughly equivalent, perhaps a bit louder, and the leads really tear up the scene where they appear; the guitar riffs in general just seem more muscular and potent than so many I had been disappointed with on The Rack, even if these are not incredibly memorable death metal tunes for the time, but rather on the primal level of what bands like Cianide and Cancer were coming up with during the same period. "The Krusher" was mildly catchier, if not impressive, with a nice death/doom lurch to it that got along well with the grotesque vocal lines, and so it did generate some positive portents for Last One on Earth, an album I ended up enjoying more than the first. I must say, though, that nothing here is necessarily spectacular and the EP doesn't have much value beyond that of a collector's piece or for anyone who REALLY WANTS to hear the demo cuts 're-imagined'.

As for the live tunes, both ("Evocation" and "Wasteland of Terror") are off The Rack and seem quite vibrant from a Stockholm gig. I have long believed that the simplicity of Asphyx' material would lend itself better to the live setting, and this confirms it, because neither track sounds as laconic or impotent as the previous studio recording. The drums have a lot more pep, the guitars fuzzed the fuck out and van Drunen sounds absolutely fantastic here, on both the bass and microphone. That lead in "Evocation" sounds somewhat transcendent here, but even if the majority of riffing selections are still pretty barebones for early 90s death metal, I feel like they would have been fairly fun to watch. As a result, Crush the Cenotaph seems like pretty solid fan bait, just not something to go out of your way to acquire unless you can conveniently get the 2006 Century Media reissue of Last One on Earth which includes both this EP content and some other early material. Musically it's not so grisly as the cover artwork would imply, but then anyone who hear The Rack probably wouldn't be expecting anything more than stock death metal with a few morbid, doomy hooks. Asphyx was not yet living up to the hype that succeeded them 15-20 years later, but in my opinion they still haven't, so this isn't something that I often, or really ever have the urge to listen through.

Verdict: Indifference [6/10] (frenzied eyes look into the past)

http://www.asphyx.nl/

Fallen Angel - Faith Fails (1992)

It's difficult to imagine a region of metal music in which the Swedes weren't a dominating force, especially considering the past 20 years, but 80s/first wave thrash metal was clearly one of them, and only a trickle of acts came from that particular scene, several of which were simply too late to the dance to find a partner. A prime example of this was Fallen Angel, who were writing in a decidedly late 80s style with only slight advances in their production values to separate them from a whole host of US acts. Makes sense, as the group was formed in the middle of that decade and even the material on their sole Massacre full-length, Faith Fails was cultivated from earlier, unsigned output like a self-released EP in 1990. Of course, by '92 this style was already on the way out, The Black Album and Seattle music scene had changed just about everything, and even Fallen Angel's chief influence had begun tweaking its style towards something different...

That being Testament, whose guitar composition on albums like The New Order and Practice What You Preach really rubbed off on this band at the end of the 80s, to the extent that there are points on tunes like "Premier Parish" and "Ice" in which I felt like Eric Peterson had hijacked one of the rhythm guitar positions. Precise, thick palm muted picking drives a lot of mid-paced headbangers with splices of surgical melodic fills that wouldn't have been out of place on either of the aforementioned West Coast outings. Hell, they've even got the requisite power ballad (the title track). The only thing really missing is Chuck Billy's vocal presence, because Johan Bülow had a style which was more like a petulant imp in the lower range, but sounded eerily like Nuclear Assault's John Connelly when he's straining to fill the higher octaves. Otherwise, this might have been a natural successor to Souls of Black if Testament had not chosen the moodier heavy metal nostalgia of The Ritual (though I'm glad they did). That said, while the Swedes were not onto anything new, and ultimately a composite of American forebears, they do manage to develop some variation and tight songwriting that actually prove worthwhile.

This is a pretty clean sounding affair with a lot of punch to the rhythm guitar and a somewhat sterile drum mix, but keep in mind that we were still in an era in which many thrash drummers were confused as to whether they needed to become Gene Hoglan thunderstorms or better represent the hard rock and punk influences that initially fueled the subgenre. To be fair, there are some decent, measured double bass patterns strewn throughout, and some powerful snare strikes, but I did get the impression that a lot more power could have been applied to a beneficial effect. The bass is thick and plunky, another parallel to the Testament influence, but I found that the lines often got buried beneath the guitars, especially when the lead harmonies break out in tunes like "Premier Parish" and they totally steal the spotlight from anything else. Speaking of which, the melodies throughout the album are fantastic, mixed to great effect to instantly add more depth and character to the entire experience, elevating even Johan's vocals when they are performed in conjunction (like the chorus of "At Night", which is superb).

Once you get a little deeper into the track list, other influences start to rear their ugly heads, like a bit of later Idolatry-era Devastation or Void Terra Firma/Beyond Recognition Defiance due to that tightness and polish of the rhythm guitars ("Hangover" for example). "Dental Surgery" is clearly an attempt to resurrect Metallica's "Battery" so much that the initial charge rhythm sounds almost exactly like the verse guitars in that song. "Another One" has an interesting, clinical composure reminiscent of Destruction's Cracked Brain album. I think the main thing Fallen Angel really had going for it was the gorgeous, gleaming harmonies that weren't necessarily a factor on any of the influences, but I also won't deny that they were solid songwriters who kept the pacing varied throughout the 49 minutes of material, with very few songs that I couldn't at least enjoy by banging my head to. "Hangover" was rather weak, and I could have lived without the "Faith Fails" ballad, but the latter was well enough conceived with the lush acoustic guitars and ambiance that I don't hold much of a grudge for it...and I like that you can really make out the bass fills there.

I'm pretty sure that this was virtually unheard of outside of Europe, and I for one knew no one here in the States who had ever listened to it, but when playing it for a few Testament fans in junior college it elicited some strong reactions, followed by requests for a dub. Faith Fails is a well written example of a craft that had already more or less breathed its last (for the time being), and honestly this is the sort of thrash metal you really won't hear anymore, since most of the modern revivalists hone in on other West Coast US or German influences and build off of them, while originators like Testament, Heathen and Forbidden have evolved their own styles into a more modern milieu. But, at the same time, that ensures that Fallen Angel, derivative or not, have a rarity and obscurity about them which makes them fun to revisit on occasion, and fans of clean as a whistle, turn of the decade US thrash like Practice What You Preach, Twisted Into Form, Beyond Recognition and When the Storm Comes Down might very well appreciate it.

Verdict: Win [7.5/10] (hoping to survive the day)

Cadaver - In Pains (1992)

Hallucinating Anxiety had technically already been released through Earache Records, or rather Necrosis, a short-lived sub-imprint run by Carcass members; but for its followup ...In Pains, the Norwegian band was shifted over to the primary label. This increase in visibility, and also availability, coincided with a more professional, tightened direction for the group musically, and thus it's no shock that the sophomore was the disc to land them onto the radars of the underground death metal audience, who had begun expanding their collections as the genre truly took off with a number of important releases in the early 90s. Quite like the previous album, ...In Pains was hardly pursuing the most unique of identities, but where Hallucinating Anxiety fused a smattering of influences into a grisly, primitive and entertaining melting pot, its followup was more or less standing in the shadow of the Floridian band Death, who had at this point released their highly popular Human.

...In Pains is no direct bite off that record, but it's similar in structure. I'd characterize it as a more simplistic alternative to Human or Spiritual Healing, with a lot less guitar finesse, melody and lead-work, and a few mildly inventive embellishments in instrumentation: flutes, double bass, etc. Other comparisons I could make would be to Dutch bands like Pestilence (Testimony of the Ancients) or Creepmine (Shadows). The 'progressive' influence isn't quite so overt or spastic as a Cynic or Atheist, but it's largely felt through the swerving bass performance or the slightly jammy, dissonant nature inherent to several of the bridge sections. By and large, though, it's pretty much pure death metal, alternating between palm muted chugging and the expected tremolo picked patterns. Both were present on the debut, but to be blunt: ...In Pains is different enough due to its increased production standards that the two discs might as well be from separate bands. The UK influences like Bolt Thrower, Napalm Death and Carcass have been all but erased; you might hear a few similarities to Necroticism, perhaps, but that cruddy feeling, that grime, and that grind have been sacrificed in favor of a tighter, controlled, bass-heavy mix which was far more accessible to the death metal initiate, or the more musically demanding following who were already installed.

Gone are the repulsive, distorted bass-lines, and replaced with a more pulsing, pumping fusion, jazz or funk  influenced tone that competes with the drums and rhythm guitar for volume. Ole's vocals aren't much different than before, but the syllabic structures feel a bit more blunt and slack. His drumming, on the other hand, is better balanced and engineered, with more prevalent bass than the debut. Some of the power and charm has been leached out of them, and the construction of the riffs doesn't lend itself to much intensity, since there is a taut but lazy playfulness to the album which is like a recreation room at a mental hospital. The rhythm guitar tone is rich and propulsive, lending a thicker viscosity to the power chords, and the airier melodies and brief leads help flesh out the music (something that was admittedly absent on the debut). There are points through ...In Pains (like "Blurred Visions" or "Ins-through-mental") where the composition becomes very chunky and reflexive, the guitars and rhythm in a dextrous, acrobatic union both reflexive and interesting, and quite modern for their day, even if some of the aforementioned acts were doing it more successfully or with a more obvious experimental edge.

Granted, the heightened emphasis on bass guitar, and the few existing lines of flute or string instrument are about as 'far out' as Cadaver's sophomore is willing to go, but overall it conveys a real sense of evolution that was not at all unwelcome. In retrospect, though the busyness and effort placed into this record are to be admired, and most of the tracks have at least a temporarily interesting or catchy twist, I do feel that the contemporary atmosphere and polish of ...In Pains has never really given me that same thrill of pathos and nostalgia that the debut evokes. It's a solid album, I'd hazard even a 'good' album, with an understandable appeal. More psychological and subtle than its precursor, unquestionably. Yet for the same reasons I'd rather be driving some vintage muscle car over a 21st century economy auto, I favor their first full-length. But if you've any natural predilection towards records like Human, Individual Thought Patterns, Testimony of the Ancients, Erosion of Sanity, Unquestionable Presence, Hallucinations, Considered Dead, or even Necroticism, then certainly check this one out.

Verdict: Win [7.5/10] (a culture of anxiety)

http://www.myspace.com/cadaver

Bolt Thrower - The IVth Crusade (1992)

The IVth Crusade proved a welcome turnaround from the diminishing returns of its predecessor War Master, and brought back a fraction of that oppressive, Realms of Chaos heaviness, but this praise comes with a price, for his album was also pretty much the peak of Bolt Thrower's cycle of artistic development as a band. That is to say, all four of the albums since this one have not really shown any meaningful progression beyond this, apart from minor production details, marginally divergent instrument tones, levels of melody, and precise lyrical subjects. Not that this implies they're all worthless in of themselves; hell, I enjoy Those Once Loyal just as much as The IVth Crusade. But I've never been able to shake the feeling that they've been riding their own, viscera splattered coattails for many years now, reaching that creative summit early on and providing nothing since but a rehash of musical ideas. From a band which recorded one of my favorite works in its genre, I simply expect more, but at least when I first acquired The IVth Crusade, I had high hopes that the band could continue to develop.

Whereas War Master was a fraction too clean, and void of the many impressive tracks required to capitalize on the crushing atmospheres of Realms of Chaos, The IVth Crusade seeks to accumulate some of that filth again, caking its tank treads with a grimier, slightly fuzzier guitar tone that burns an impression into the audience more successfully. They'd once more gone with Colin Richardson as producer, but he's able to extract a bleaker, moodier Bolt Thrower here, and the result is something I was rather expecting from its predecessor. Granted, this album isn't exactly in tip top shape as far as the riffing quality, but its gray faced grooves and economic implementation of melody help to compensate for any dearth of searing progressions. I've long felt that there was more of an old school 'Florida' aesthetic at work here. The stark simplicity of the songwriting was nothing new, but the slower paced chugging patterns would occasionally remind me of Obituary (1988-1992 era) in both tone and structure. The IVth Crusade also paces itself very well, from the sobering and glorious title track opener through a number of relatively distinct classics in the band's discography, like "Spearhead" or the lumbering "As the World Burns". There are definitely a few lulls in the excitement through the 53 minutes, and it might have benefited from about 10 minutes of trim, but little of the material is banal enough that you'll want to turn it right off.

Really dug the balance of guitars and drums here. The latter were probably Andy Whale's most taut and professional performance to their day, with a lot of double kicks that coursed along to those saturated, processed rhythm guitar grooves. It's clear they were aiming at a lot of low end resonance, so the snares and cymbals aren't set as centerpieces to the mix, but despite that the drumming is clear and functional. The bass guitar stands out slightly more for me than on the prior two albums, itself cast in a bit of fuzz, but the guitars distract the ears away from those frequencies with few exceptions, and it still seems a tad too complacent. As for Karl Willetts, he's hardly dispensing syllabic lines that feel innovative or fresh after War Master and Realms of Chaos. I think the issue is that he, too, is really no match for this guitar tone, and since he's no longer using the most ominously morbid of inflections, he's perhaps the least potent force on the album. The use of faint, atmospheric synths is not unwelcome, but they're perhaps too buried in the background, at least the bridge of "Ritual". The idea of using narrative, cleaner vocals in the bonus track "Through the Ages" is an interesting one for Bolt Thrower, but simply reading a chronological tour of historical battles felt cheesy...

I mean: yeah, we get it. War is a paramount, tragic admission of mankind's failures. You'd have be living on another planet with no line of communication to NOT realize this; but it still seems a little hammy for Bolt Thrower, a band whose militaristic themes, both fictional and historical, are a big part of their popularity. But at least the slow, doom-like riff behind it was pretty sweet, and I don't wanna digress too far: despite its few flaws, The IVth Crusade is still far and away one of the Brits' best albums. At worst its just treading the band's familiar conquests with due consistency, but at best its an evocative, grim, hypnotic experience, with a more philosophical and historical lyrical theme that examines more than just the battlefield, but far reaching societal implications of idol worship ("Icon"), dreams of the afterlife ("Celestial Sanctuary"), and the nuclear irresponsibility of progress ("As the World Burns"). All told, a damn solid, quality listen which has held up for two decades. It only rarely engrosses me to the extent that Realms of Chaos did, but its better than just about anything else they've released since, with the one exception I noted above.

Verdict: Win [8.5/10] (repentance is denied)

http://www.boltthrower.com/

Acheron - Rites of the Black Mass (1992)

I've still got pretty vivid memories about Acheron from the earlier 90s, still in my teens, how they were supposed to be this totally evil death metal band attached to the Church of Satan who were writing some of the most insane shit out there. More than one acquaintance had made a recommendation of their debut Rites of the Black Mass, citing it as the most extreme thing since...Deicide. Once I was finally able to get my paws on the JL America issue of the debut, I learned better, because for all its pure intent and purpose, this album is actually quite unintentionally lighthearted due to the decision to alternate hammy, narrated ambient or symphonic pieces between each of the metal tracks...

Don't get me wrong, where it counts, this is a decent death metal effort with a solid old school tone, but it's hardly the harbinger of the apocalypse that I had expected. Bassist/vocalist Vincent Crowley was a former Reverend in the Church of Satan (and I mean 'former', he hasn't been involved with that scene for some time now), so the messages behind the album were influenced by Anton Szandor LaVey, and taken quite seriously by the author. Keys were provided by Peter H. Gilmore, another diabolist involved in such circles, and you've got the requisite Enochian Key-like chants (some Latin, some English) which sound as if they've been pitch-shifted down. These are probably the cheesiest thing on the album; even if you get used to them after many repetitions, they still render the Satanic themes into something of a cartoon cliche, and ultimate negate some of the menace Rites might have otherwise attained. Coupled with the pretty average Luciferian praise in the lyrics, the album doesn't read as if it's got much more depth than Venom or Deicide, it just sort of wears its concept boldly on its sleeve and then never does much interesting with it...

As for the intros and interludes themselves, I rather enjoyed the the mixture of infernal organs to a more perturbing, psychedelic use of ritualistic or martial sounding synth pads that Gilmore brought to the album. There's a fairly stark contrast against the meatier, straightforward death metal content, but as someone who revels in old videogame soundtracks, formative ambient works and other atmospheric records I've got no problem with the lo-fi sounds involved. As for how they 'flow' with the harder tracks, that is certainly a bone of contention, for they rarely provide much of a compliment or transitory motion to the work as a whole. As a result, it feels more like an experimentation akin to Pestilence's Testimony to the Ancients and its jazz fusion interludes: consistent in of themselves, but not so much with the death metal content. You could play all 10 of these in a row and they'd give you about 10-12 minutes of apocryphal ritual horror you might have expected from a cult 80s flick, good for a gag, but they're not really necessary. I could picture hanging a speaker out my window and then trolling the trick or treaters and (especially) their parents with these, but I'm not exactly 16 anymore.

Rites of the Black Mass has since earned a bit of a 'black metal' tag, but apart from a few of the snarled vocals (which are likely more influenced by Deicide and Carcass), the association is nothing more than a thematic and lyrical one, since musically what we've got here is pure death metal with a few traces of doom relegated to specific riffs. I guess if we're to consider the Czech band Root black metal, then it's not such a big deal to speak the same of Acheron. Aesthetically, the two bands share a lot in common, but when it comes to the actual construction of the riffs, I was generally reminded of early Floridian peers like Death  and Obituary, or perhaps some Autopsy and Master. Very vile, simplistic tremolo picked sequences and chord progressions are used to good effect, but you can also hear a metric fuck ton of Hellhammer/Celtic Frost influence in pieces like "One With Darkness", where they churn out those deadened swaggering chords, or some Sabbath/Candlemass groove to "Ave Satanas".

There's quite a variety in terms of pacing and architecture, and all the metal cuts are decent, even if they were hardly unique in their day. The production isn't quite pristine, but it's decent for Morrisound in the early 90s. There's a slightly muddy tinge to the guitars which creates this potent miasma of darkness but holds up even when the notes hit higher registers. Lead passes are quite sporadic and creepy throughout, even when they risk a bolder melody. The bass is very much audible, plugging and pumping away with a fat Faustian tone, but it generally sticks to the same note patterns as the guitar. Drums on this were contributed by James Strauss, who has since gone on to perform with the Pennsylvanian band Sathanas in the 21st century; basic, charging rock rhythms complemented with a few double bass rolls, this record is hardly going to win an award for the extremity of the beats, but since it's not a very fast or complex creature, such weren't required.  As for the vocals, Vincent had a timbre comparable to Tardy, Van Drunen, or Reifert if a little more blunt and less grisly; again, nothing remotely unique, but there are occasionally some snarls, rasps, and  deeper gurgles to add another layer of repulsion, and Mike Browning of Nocturnus also shows up for some backing barks.

In retrospect I'm surprised to say that this is probably my favorite of Acheron's recordings. The band has meddled with other ideas and slightly altered its sound since the early 90s, but I find Rites of the Black Mass to bear an authenticity to its composition that is still pretty fun to break out once in a blood moon. It's nothing exemplary in terms of how they've put together the songs, but with 20 tracks (half intros, half metal) there is quite a lot to digest, and if you can get over the silliness of the narrator during the interludes then you'll find a kindred spirit to Slowly We Rot, Severed Survival, Scream Bloody Gore, Master and The Rack, only spiced up as if it were the soundtrack to some long lost Hammer Horror flick. It wasn't written or played for laughs, that much is certain, and though I have a healthy respect for The Satanic Bible and some of the philosophical motives behind it, I just can't help cackling at how over the top it seemed (and still seems).

Verdict: Win [7.5/10] (deliver us from false piety)

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Acheron/128581467223407

Testament - The Ritual (1992)

Like many other listeners, my initial reaction to Testament's 'dumbing down' was one of shock and confusion, concerns that the band was attempting to ape the enormous success Metallica had with their own simplified, streamlined 1991 record The Black Album. No way man, another of my favorite West Coast thrash bands sold itself down the river! Sure, there were a few catchy tracks from the onset of exposure to this record, like the massive opener "Electric Crown" or the strangely uplifting "Agony", but for whatever reason, I found that at the time, this just wasn't what I was interested in hearing. I had been on a death metal binge for a few years, and black metal as we know it was just starting to become available (through imports), not to mention the other sounds like grunge, rap and 'alternative' which peaked at the dawn of the 90s.

But I was wrong, and I've spent the past 20 years repenting just HOW wrong, because over time, I've not only grown to love this beast, but it's become my absolute favorite of their full-lengths to date. An opinion, that, to the thrash purist, must be like attempting to practice witchcraft at a Puritan prayer club; but I don't spend hours listening and typing these reviews out to lie, people. Even if you've never trusted my word on anything else, or burn wicker statues of me on your front lawn, I'd implore detractors of this record to set the proper mood, and give The Ritual another chance, because it's one of the truly underrated works of those parched early 90s, where quality metal was a rarity more than a commodity. Yeah, it existed if you knew where to find it, but the likelihood of picking up even a major band's new record and coming out satisfied were pretty slim. It's important to note that, unlike Metallica, who had a decade of huge sales within the diminished creative returns of their 'hard rock' years, this would prove a one-off for Testament, the last of the classic lineup's collaborations, before initiating the train depot arrival/departure of temporary members and pursuing a more modern, aggressive direction through Low and the ill-met Demonic. So if you seek this more atmospheric, 'heavy metal' incarnation of Testament, there is but one place to turn...

Thankfully, that place is still open and ready for your business. This album never grows old, a result of the simple and focused songwriting, immortal chorus melodies and raucous, airy guitar tone. Although one could still discern a 'thrash' element to the riffing, thanks to the heavy use of palm mutes, The Ritual has more in line with a mainstream heavy metal sound. Like The Black Album, or perhaps doom royalty Trouble's Manic Frustration (another unsung, excellent record from this same year). Essentially, they decided to peel back the years and return to the roots of what made them interested in metal, and thus the compositions feel just as Deep Purple as they do Master of Puppets. Don't get me wrong, the boxcar tone of the guitars is heavy as balls, and there is plenty to bang your head or fists at, but The Ritual is so suffused with vocal echoes, reverb and beautiful, blues-born leads and melodies that it's built more for a road trip than a mosh pit. Seriously, whether you're behind the helm of an 18-wheeler of your mother's station wagon, this thing is the perfect accompaniment to a long highway or back-road trek, capable of making the journey just as emotionally resonant as the destination. One of the reasons I've been able to continually connect to it and enjoy it for such a long time.

This is not so much an album of nuance or innovation, but one of an 'alternate history'. Like a novel by Harry Turtledove, it answers its 'what if' scenario in style. Just the production on The Ritual alone breeds subtleties that fasten themselves to the ear (and heart) with each exposure, and what initially was a mild reception to just a handful of tracks has blossomed into a love of nearly every moment of the record. The one exception might be the closer "Troubled Dreams", which I often forget is even there, but it still fits the aesthetics of this sound rather well, its riffing structures a nod to the band's past. Even the power ballads on this crush their wimpier predecessors like "The Ballad" or "The Legacy"; the sultry, evocative mix and the superior vocals seem so much more heartfelt. Testament wrote those tracks to get on the radio, or to get laid, but they wrote these for dudes deep in their cups at the local bar, wondering where the next paycheck will come from. In particular, "Return to Serenity" is memorable, with its glossed cleans, distant hovering micro-leads and then a build-up with reminds me of the drama present in Megadeth's "In My Darkest Hour", with Billy clearly meting out a stronger performance than their earlier lighter-swaying fare.

The heart of this record, though, isn't its most sober moments, but the forceful, ass-kicking of the riffs native to songs like "Electric Crown", "Agony" and "The Sermon" which are impossible for me not to headbang to, or the slower, pulverizing grooves that comprise "So Many Lies" or "As the Seasons Grey". Though the song structures are pretty simplistic, with only a few central guitar progressions slathered in great leads and vocals, there isn't a single riff throughout that feels unnecessary or out of place. Greg Christian's bass tone is not so prevalent as Practice What You Preach, but more a flood of depth that anchors the muscular rhythm guitar. Louie Clemente's drums are pure hard rock, slight in technicality but long on power. As usual, the leads are very well prepared by Skolnick, peaking through the beautiful escalation of "As the Seasons Grey", but suitably shredding and acrobatic even on the intro "Signs of Chaos" or the swaggering rise and fall of "So Many Lies". At times, I felt a little Criss Oliva (Savatage) tone and technique in a handful of the rhythm guitar, never a bad thing, though Testament is far burlier.

Lyrically, this is probably the most personal of the Californians' works, and they deal with a lot of topics like loss, betrayal, and personal freedom. Again, we're not dealing with much complexity in their craft, but thanks to Chuck's infallible, Hetfield-esque inflection, almost every line on the album drives home its point, and where he erupts into the chorus of something like "Agony" I get chills down my spine, even in lieu of the predictable chord pattern below. It's the blues man. Iron clad blues, beating you within an inch of your life while granting you the wisdom to survive. Paired with the sheer gravity and pummeling force of the music, the message is unstoppable, and it's no wonder this album has grown so far in my estimation through persistent listening. I realize this isn't the shit-kicking nuclear thrash people want from Testament; the increased accessibility, diminished speed and riff mechanics exorcise it from that genre almost entirely. It's only perfect for about 45-48 minutes out the 55, but nevertheless, The Ritual is heartfelt, brave and brawny music which never loses its luster, and when did that stop being important? A rousing success of an 'experiment', and if I'm the only guy who loves this until he's old and grey, than I'll play the odd man out proudly.

Verdict: Epic Win [9.5/10] (things I must die for)

http://www.testamentlegions.com/site/