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Here’s a slammin’ lil slab for your Metal Monday consumption. Exorcist - Nightmare Theater. This is a super catchy record of dirty power-thrash, pretty similar to Venom in the heavy riffs and huge choruses, with just a touch more speed and technical ability similar to the “German Thrash” sound . The difference is these guys are actually pretty good musicians, and by these guys, you may be shocked to know that I mean, the majority of Virgin Steele. Check out this little blurb from the ever-popular Metal-Archives:

Here’s the alleged story… in 1985, Jack Starr (Burning Starr) was on the way out of Virgin Steele, due to disagreements with the rest of the band. To let off creative steam, David DeFeis did some songwriting for Cobra Records artists like Piledriver, and also the band jammed with a new guitarist, Edward Pursino. Finally, they decided to record an album but could not release it as Virgin Steele since the name belonged to Jack Starr. They put out the “Nightmare Theatre“ album in mid-1985. They then kicked out Jack Starr and one lawsuit later, the name Virgin Steele was Dave’s and Edward was in the band. But part of the settlement was that Exorcist would remain Exorcist and not be associated with the Virgin Steele “Noble Savage“ lineup that wrote it!

So there you have it, even a Piledriver connection. Of course one thing about this lp is that it’s way better than anything Venom did in ‘85, the chorus to the opener “Black Mass” is big, dumb, and awesome. One kind of weird aspect of this album is there are a lot of interludes, usually they’re weird skits, sometimes they’re ambient keyboard stuff, and sometimes a combo of the two. The skits are all pitch-shifted either higher or lower to sound like weird creatures, and they’re kinda funny, and they actually keep things moving better than you’d think, and keep things from getting overly serious, although a lot of them are nearly impossible to understand. All jibber-jabber aside though this is one of the catchiest thrash records out there, and it sells pretty low frequently. Essential to check out IMO.