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Voivod was never your average thrash band, even when they were trying to be, they weren’t. They were always kind of weird and angular. Their first lp War and Pain is an anomaly for the time. It’s clearly based off early Venom, Metallica, and Slayer, but it strays so far from the paths laid out by those groups that it has relatively little in common with them. The recording is strange, with what seems to be only a single bulldozer guitar track laid down with a layer of chorus and reverb (there to thicken it up) by the incredible Denis D’Amour: AKA Piggy (R.I.P.) . Solos are played live on the main track (rather than punching in like most metal records of the day) leaving bassist Jean-Yves Thériault, AKA Blacky, to carry the rhythm with his thick and over-driven sound. Things never manage to sound too thin, in part due to the spaced out shimmering chorus effects on the guitar and crunchy bass, but also due to the thundering drumming Michel Langevin, AKA Away, who overcomes the rather mediocre drum production (sounds like big plastic buckets in a large concrete room).  The songs themselves kind of roll at a Venom clip, but with bizarre riffy twists and turns, weird chords, and a sci-fi atmosphere. 

Voivod’s imagery was steeped in post apocalyptic sci-fi and technological nightmares from the get-go, and the wild guitar sound cultivated on this album fits with that perfectly. Away was actually responsible for their logo design, and all their album art/layout which, much like their music, broke with the norms of the day for thrash bands. Instead of the Boris Vallejo inspired airbrush fantasies most metal bands were using, Away painted surreal, abstract, pictures of grotesque machines, covered in primitive looking weaponry, and grime. His approach could be described possibly as Cubist (props to metal-inquisition) in tradition on the cover of War and Pain, featuring a stylized rendition of some kind of foot soldier armed to the teeth for battle in some horrible future war like Mad Max meets Heavy Metal (the comic) and Blade Runner.

Since this is bid hardcore though, I’d like to bring forth a kind of interesting theory: that War and Pain was a huge influence on the guitar playing of Gavin Van Vlack (of Absolution, and later Burn). While I have never heard Gavin talk about Voivod (that I can remember) the similarities in his guitar playing, and that of Piggy, are striking, and there are several riffs on War and Pain that have direct parallels in Absolution and Burn songs. If Gavin was not listening to this record, then at the very least, it makes an interesting comparison. In fact his commonalities with Piggy’s guitar playing starts with the actual sound he uses, with the wet chorus sound being really similar to the s/t Burn 7″, which is only emphasized by the constant use of full chords and open strings (employed equally often by Gavin). Take the break down around 3:40 in Warriors On Ice. It works almost the exact same style churning riff that the famous “your ideas are WRONG…etc.” part of Burn’s “Shall Be Judged”. Similarly the ascending riff in “Suck Your Bone” (ha), has pretty noticeable similarity to the bridge in Absolution’s “A Drop Of Patience” as well as the main riff in “Fall Of A Nation”. 

I’m not bringing up this stuff to disrespect or diminish the songs of Burn in Absolution in anyway. Gavin and Piggy are two guitarists I heavily admire, and I just want to point out the similarity in their technique and that both of them do really cool unexpected shit, in genres that have a reputation for being rather uniform in their approach. Anyway, this is a total killer album and there’s never been anything else quite like it.

Original pressing on Metal Blade w/ rare insert…

 Metal Monday vol. 20:

You could say this is maybe a sequel to last week’s Metal Monday posting - a sealed copy of Death’s “Scream Bloody Gore” (original Combat pressing). While this doesn’t have the distinction of being the first commonly accepted death metal release, it’s a much more fully formed take on the style than the first Possessed which still has a lot more thrash-metal in it. Personally I’ve always been more of a Scream Bloody Gore man than a 7 Churches one.

Looking at the foreboding cover art for the first time, (I don’t exactly recall when), and seeing this over the top rendition of some kind of zombie temple and just knowing right then it would be the musical equivalent to a horror movie. It’s probably my favorite piece of Ed Repka art ever. Such a perfect summation of what the band is all about, and what they sounded like. When Infernal Death kicks off with the crunching intro and the first word out of Chuck Schuldiner’s throat is a lengthy “DIIIIIIIIE”, well that pretty much sums it up. The band is Death and this is Death metal.

Death Metal music is inherently powered on some kind of anti-pleasure. The riff to Death’s Zombie Ritual is like taking a sip of toxic waste or swamp water (both in ample supply in their home of Florida, Death Metal’s first home), it’s disgusting and poisonous. It’s a whole genre essentially built on that kind of aural sadism. It’s like they were working to shock themselves back to life out of the drab Reagan-ified 80’s suburban hell bands like Death, as well as fellow Floridians Obituary, Morbid Angel, and Amon came from. These bands were almost all made up of teenagers. No doubt bored, and looking at their rather bland selection of possible life paths in a world where the only things that actually made sense were the sound of a BOSS HM-1 pedal, and the plot to Evil Dead II. Chuck Schulinder and Chris Reifert were both 17 when they recorded their Mutilation demo (the 6th Death demo overall), which got them a record deal with Combat, although as this excerpt from a Reifert interview (from metal-rules dot com) shows, they weren’t exactly confident in what these guys were doing:

Combat was supposed to state on the album that Chuck and I played all the music on the album, but they ignored our request, leading to confusion for years. Also, they printed on the inner sleeve: “This album is Don Kaye’s folly”, meaning that Combat saw us as sort of a joke even though they were putting out the album. Death metal had yet to prove itself at the time and Combat were skeptical about the whole thing, I guess. I have only one copy of the vinyl left and on the inner sleeve where the Don Kaye comment is, I scratched it out and wrote ‘fuck you!’ over it with a pen.

 A few years later they had to play catch-up by licensing American pressings of releases on Earache. Dummies.

METAL MONDAY VOL. 19 

Possessed - Seven Churches is more or less the blueprint for how to make a death metal album, and is commonly accepted as the first full length vinyl release by a death metal band.  All the key aspects are in place by 1985.

• Growled/low vocals
• opening the record with the theme from a horror movie/ambient keyboards
• fixation on Satanic themes
• ridiculous technical guitar riffing
• horrible type-writer sounding drums.

Possessed are extra cool because they are really young on Seven Churches, I think guitarist Larry LaLonde (who later got rich as a member of Primus), is like 15 or 16 on this. Their drummer certainly sounds like he’s wet behind the ears, but the rest of the band puts in an admirable performance and are setting a standard. The somewhat questionable cavernous echo that fills the record out is courtesy of producer Randy Burns who went on to record the equally influential debut by Death “Scream Bloody Gore”. Together those 2 lps defined an era, and created a starting point for thousands of hopeless youths around the globe. The kind of kids you saw sneaking cigarettes and zimas behind the grocery in your home town. They had dirt lip mustaches and had seen Phantasm and Evil Dead more times than they’d been to math class. Dirts. Skids. In 1985, this was their calling.

Here’s a sealed copy just like you would have found it in the store then.

Metal Monday vol. 18 

Sodom are OLD dudes. I don’t really know how they’ve been at it for like 25-ish years making German style thrash metal, or why, but every couple years they drop another album on some Euro label. Their first E.P. “In The Sign Of Evil”has a complicated history of remixing, re-recording, etc. But here’s the original version of it on Devil’s Game records which I think is just some imprint of SPV anyway. Sodom historically were kind of influential to the image of what later became black metal (you know… that stupid collection of overpriced tapes your friend refuses to stop accumulating…) as they were an early example of a metal band taking “evil” aliases like Angel Ripper and Grave Violator, something that’s now a time honored tradition. I think they might have predated Hellhammer on this practice by a little bit, although maybe not. Truthfully this probably qualifies at most as “Black-Thrash” and isn’t anywhere close to the pure Black Metal sound Bathory was busy pioneering at the time. Regardless, it’s well rated by genre purists because of the general “savage” rasping style vocals, and the low level of technical prowess displayed on the instruments. Basically, they play like total shit, and can’t keep in time with eachother, which is both the reason for all subsequent re-recordings/remixings, and the reason why this is the only version anyone wants. Sodom eventually got decent enough at their music, to seem competent, and with Destruction and Kreator flanking them, put Germany on the map for brutal thrash metal in the 80’s. I’ve always been more of a Kreator man, but this is an entertaining listen. I prefer Sodom a tad later in their career, but they’re die-hards, and I can respect anything they do. They’ve aged better than most (Venom, etc.).

Marathon Metal Monday part II (aka Metal Tuesday) All logic dictates that Dark Angel ought to have gone into severe creative decline following Darkness Descends. Observe:

• Strike 1) Any band playing an extreme derivative of “rock” (Death/Black/Thrash Metal, Grindcore, Crust punk, etc.) without significant evolution to their sound will probably enter into a state of diminishing returns starting with their 3rd lp. This rule applies most often to bands below the first tier in their chosen genre, but often afflicts the best of them. There are ways of dodging this slump, but it’s difficult ground to tread. As Dark Angel were playing basically the same style of thrash they began with, albeit increasingly more technical, it follows that they probably were not going to improve their song craft significantly now that they were most likely spending more time distracted by road life, (more drugs, more women, long bus rides), and probably trying to take breaks from road life.
• Strike 2) Loss of key members. A loss of key members integral in shaping a band’s sound can spell disaster for obvious reasons, especially when the remaining members choose to make a new lp. Following Darkness Descends, Dark Angel had to fill not only the former guitar slot of Jim Durkin, but also the dreaded replacement vocalist position. Brett Erikson of Viking stepped up as the new guitar player, and the always bloated looking Ron Rinehart stepped into the vocal position.
• Strike 3) Playing a style that has already reached a plateau in popularity and/or general creative possibilities. It’s pretty well accepted that thrash metal was a spent force by the end of the 80’s. To loosely quote Blade Runner “The light that burns twice as bright, burns twice as fast, and you have burnt so very, very bright”. After Reign In Blood and Master Of Puppets, thrash was in a tricky bind. Generally bands tried to play even more brutal than Reign In Blood (and also Kreator’s - Pleasure To Kill), at which point you’re going to be pushing into early Death Metal territory, or more progressive and technical than the Master Of Puppets template, at which point, shit gets tedious.

As You can see the cards are stacked against Dark Angel circa the late  80’s and they’re stacked TALL. I never had any interest in hearing their 3rd lp, Leave Scars until recently when I read about how good it is on the aforementioned (yesterday) Metal Inquisition blog, but once I did, I had to hear it. So it came to pass that Leave Scars is now my favorite entry in the Dark Angel catalog. It’s the album Darkness Descends wants to be, and frankly if they could have dreamed it up sooner, the world might have had an entirely different view of Dark Angel. Gene Hoglan’s drumming is more ferocious and speedy than ever, absolutely no disrespect to Paul Bostaph (:Rodney Dangerfield voice:), but Hoglan should have taken over on the kit during the Slayer/Grip Inc. era. Thank God/Satan he’s got that cartoon network deal paying the bills.Besides the ferocity of Gene Hoglan though there are 2 things that make this album work better than the last.

• 1) Serious increase in dynamic song writing.
• 2) Moderate increase in dynamic vocal  delivery.

In other words, the song-writing and vocals are stepped up a couple of notches. The songs have a huge increase in the number of tempo changes, and because of that it follows that the individual sections stand out better because they have something to contrast against. A great example of this is the epic jam “No One Answers”. You get some serious octopus styled drum action kicking things off, before going into the grooviest mosh part to date in their career. The kind of thing I don’t think the band would have taken the time for in their earlier days. A side note, the double kick in this section sounds awesome. Heavy and boomy and not typewriter-ish at all, which is because Gene Hoglan is legit and doesn’t need drum triggers. The riffing when the song takes full speed is practically at a Forced Entry/Vio-lence style level of difficulty, that is, about as technical and flashy as straight thrash metal can get. The riff-fest continues for almost 8 minutes with muscular narration by Rinehart who has a deeper delivery than Don Doty ever managed, and a more consistent one as well. Maybe the Hetfield to Doty’s Bauloff (R.I.P.). Not as wild or crazy, but with more of the necessary power and control. Leave Scars brings it all together. The speed and power of Darkness Descends, the crunch and bludgeoning mosh of the best Slayer, the technical prowess and ambition of Metallica (but with obviously much better drumming), a few brief melodic passages, everything is in place. Unfortunately, between 1986 and 1989 a few things had happened. Specifically:

• 1987) Scream Bloody Gore, Scum
• 1988) Reek Of Putrefaction, From Enslavement To Obliteration, Leporacy
• 1989) Slowly We Rot, Alters Of Madness, Left Hand Path, Symphonies of Sickness

In short, metal-heads invented Death Metal. Even if you write the heaviest Thrash album ever (and Leave Scars is a legitimate contender), it’s going to sound like Thin Lizzy up against debuts by Morbid Angel, Obituary, and Entombed. People had been talking about the rising Grind-core  and Death Metal trends since John Peel started playing Carcass and Napalm Death, and ‘89 was the year it really became impossible to ignore. There just wasn’t a lot of room for a band that had always been considered second class when a whole new crop of infinitely more extreme groups had stepped into the spotlight. Oh and, in case you forgot, this is the 2nd Dark Angel lp to have horrible crappy artwork. This one has a little kid in a room full of stuffed animals with an ominous shadow cast over the room like there’s a monster coming out of the closet. The Dark Angel logo is in 3D and the room seems to be bathed in pink neon light. God this record cover sucks so much. Any hope they might have had of being noticed for an outstanding achievement must have gone down the tubes with this one.When we meet Dark Angel again the year is 1991. Things are looking BAD. Thrash is dead. Like really dead. Metallica and Megadeth are playing A.O.R. rock versions of their old sounds, Slayer now has vocals that are screamed on key, Exodus is a distant memory, Death Metal is massive, and worst of all “Grunge” is breaking (or at least about to). I’m sure there’s pressure from the record label to do something commercial, and I will say Ron Rinehart’s vocals take on a little bit of a “…And Justice For All” type Hetfield quality on Dark Angel’s final lp, “Time Does Not Heal”, but other than that, there’s no concession for any popular trends of the day in heavy music. Actually “…And Justice” is a pretty good comparison for the music on here too, because it’s just endless riffing, and endless long songs. I can’t say it’s as good as the 2 lps that precede it, but I can respect it for being wildly self indulgent and hopeless of having any commercial appeal. How self indulgent you ask? “Time Does Not Heal”is infamously known for being comprised of 246 different riffs.  For a 9 song lp, that averages to a little more than 27 riffs per song. To say this is a challenging work that can only be taken on its own terms would be a cliched understatement.Commercially this album fared most likely worse than the previous ones, and again it has a terrible cover that could have only hurt sales, this time it has some C-grade model in a fuchsia turtle-neck trying to escape some kind of evil alleyway lair type thing. I can only wonder why. But horrible cover aside, I find it admirable that Dark Angel goes out with both guns blazing here, making the most complex, and over the top album they possibly could without changing their sound really, which is something few Thrash bands could lay claim to when all was said and done. I think that’s more than enough. Apologies for 2 bloated posts about a bay area thrash band, tomorrow it’s bidHARDCORE.com again. PEACE.

Traditionally in Boston, Massachusetts, sometime in mid-April, the Boston Marathon is run by hundreds of people more physically fit than me, effectively shutting the entire city down, and creating a long weekend for all non-retail employed residents. As a celebration of this, I’ve prepared, partially in advance, a MARATHON METAL MONDAY posting. By that I mean it shall be longer and more detailed than average, so long in fact that it’s spilling over into tomorrow’s posting. Unnecessary? Maybe, but I’m having fun. I’d like to give a shoot out to MetalInquisition.Blogspot.com today for partially inspiring this post with their great Death Angel vs. Dark Angel posting, and for generally sending me into thrash metal overload recently with these kind of discussions.

Metal Monday Vol. 17 (part I); Marathon edition:

Dark Angel might win the title for “best of the also-rans” which sucks because they’re actually pretty awesome and deserve better. But wait, before anything, please check out this DISGUSTING photo of the band below. Based on this photo I would wager that no one in the group has slept in 5-10 days, opting instead to do their best to smoke an entire garbage bag full of carpet meth, possibly pausing to eat something without any nutritional value like a fruit roll-up or some french fries. I’m not sure if you eat when you’re high on meth for an entire week? Seriously this should be on the cover of a Carcass lp it’s so disgusting looking: http://www.painkillerrecords.com/cc/bidhc2/126_photo.jpg

Hey WELCOME BACK! I hope that you didn’t have too much trouble cleaning the puke off your computer screen.

Dark Angel got their start in the Bay Area like a million other thrash metal bands, around ‘83 or ‘84. They went through the requisite lineup changes of singers, guitar players, roadies, got some demos out into the tape trading scene and made a name on the local gig circuit. It’s pretty clear from the get-go they were most influenced by their much better known bay area brethren, Slayer, and because of this their career could only exist in the shadow of Slayer who got all the breaks that Dark Angel never really could. Their first album (which spurred me into making this post) “We Have Arrived” (ha, what a title), originally came out in ‘85 on Metal Storm records with a cool looking pen and ink black and white cover with demons, zombified metal heads and a big tombstone. In fact this was the only time in Dark Angel’s entire career when they would have a good looking album cover. I think there is actually a later issue on Combat or Metal Blade with a stupid looking revised cover. What a shame! Musically things are pretty similar to Slayer’s “Show No Mercy” which leads me to believe these are probably songs they had been gigging out with for a couple years already because at that point this stuff ought to have sounded a little outdated. This would be from the same year Slayer was already issuing Hell Awaits which I’ll get back to in a minute, but at any rate, they were being outclassed by their competition here. No Tomorrow will give the seasoned listener a bit of a laugh when the main riff kicks up as it’s more or less the “Ice Ice Baby” to Hit The Light’s “Under Pressure”. Every time I listen I expect the first line to be “No Life ‘Til Leather”. Of course they try to speed it up so you don’t notice as much, but it’s hard not to. Despite all this, “We Have Arrived” (maybe it needs a subtitle like … “Late For the Party” or something) is pretty durable speed/thrash offering, like a junior “Bonded By Blood” or the aforementioned “Show No Mercy”.

As I noted already Hell Awaits came out in ‘85, and if you need any more proof on how much of an influence Slayer was on Dark Angel, look no further than their second album, and by far best known, Darkness Descends. Hell Awaits was extremely progressive and technical for its time. The songs are probably the longest of Slayer’s career, there’s numerous riffs in every song, and the vibe is really dark, an early prediction of death metal I suppose. Thus when Dark Angel assembled their follow-up with a new drummer, Gene Hoglan, who today has the reputation of being one of the fastest and most precise drummers in metal, they adjusted their level of precision and shredding to match. Also, for you tv fans, he’s one of the studio musicians that plays on the Metalocalypse cartoon show. Anyhow with a world class drummer Dark Angel was set to try and out-tech Hell Awaits, to beat Slayer at their own game, and one would assume ascend to the level of Bay Area main attraction. Unfortunately for them, this was the year Slayer released Reign in Blood and Metallica issued Master of Puppets. OUCH. First of all the very band they’re obviously copying pulls a coup on the scene, signs to a major label, and then issues an album where half the songs are less than 3 minutes, and manages to out-brutalize everyone. Secondly you’ve got Metallica proving even with the worst drummer out there they can still write the most technical and progressive album of the year.

Darkness Descends breaks open with a massive sounding title track that has a serious slam inducing intro, which perfectly follows the Hell Awaits template. You can just see the denim vests flying. But what Dark Angel really came to do, and mainly what they show off on this album is speed. I’m going to agree with the opinions of many, that for the era Darkness Descends is one of the fastest records around and it’s extremely tight as well. Every 16th note falls exactly into place like bullets fired from that gatling gun Arnold is lugging around in T2. I guess the biggest difference compared to Slayer, is that Dark Angel actually have relatively coherent solos, which they’re very happy to show off to you at various intervals. A secondary, but probably more important difference is that even at their most self indulgent, and least commercial, Slayer had a knack for bludgeoning you with things that were catchy. They had a sense of when it was time to change tempo, when the song didn’t need another bridge, and I say that full well realizing that Hell Awaits is a monstrously self indulgent release. Because even at that, Darkness Descends is more so, and though it’s still EXTREMELY good, and totally classic, it’s also a total blur by the end of the first side. There’s just a bit too much speed, too many monotone shouts, too much tremolo picking and pinched note accents for much sense to be made of the proceedings. I wouldn’t say that it’s impenetrable, but it’s VERY dense. To make matters worse, Darkness Descends begins a 3 album streak of some of the WORST cover art ever to see the light of day. On this album we have a pair of claymation hands popping out of the ground in front of a Styrofoam tombstone, and a big ugly purple yellow and red Dark Angel logo next to it. This cover would be extremely scary if: you’re 6 years old, scared by the video for Thriller, or afraid of clay. I cannot believe anyone at the label OK’d this. Seriously no one could get a couple hours of Ed Repka’s time? Welcome to Will Vinton’s Spooky Halloween Party, Featuring the California Raisins, and TV’s Gene Hoglan!!!

Tomorrow you get part 2 my Marathon posting… and then I’ll get back to the hardcore and punk I promise. I’ve been thrashing all around and acting like a maniac just a little too much lately.

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.

Metal Monday vol. 15:
Today is Monday so here’s Bloodcum’s - Death By A Clothes Hanger lp w/ a reasonable buy-it-now price. Bloodcum were infamous for a couple of things, for one, they’re kind of the Roger Clinton of crossover-thrash. Why? Because their guitar player was named John Araya, a fact which their quasi-sketchy label, the infamous Wild Rags, had no scruples about playing up (if you’re lost here TOM Araya is the singer and co-founder of the world famous Slayer). In addition it’s rumored, but not confirmed that they insisted Bloodcum’s singer go by the name Joey Hanneman to play up the “Slayer’s Younger Brothers” angle (corresponding to Slayer guitarist Jeff Hanneman).

The story is that the members were also Slayer’s roadies, and would come to hang out at practice, after which they would pick up the band’s instruments and goof off. Over time they became relatively competent, recruited a couple more members, cut a demo, and then issued this album, which as you can see by the title (not to mention the band name) is about as tasteful as taking your date to Wendy’s. In terms of music most of the songs owe heavy debts to The Accused, Cryptic Slaughter, Suicidal, & D.R.I., really the only thing in common with Slayer is solos which were clearly lifted from the King/Hanneman school (or more acurratly: King/Hanneman/King/Hanneman/King/Hanneman/King) of “play a bunch of random notes as fast as you can for about 6 seconds”. Lyrically things are definitely on the Accused/Suicidal end of things. There’s a song about how much it sucks to get married, some gory murder glorifications (Son Of Sam, Live To Kill, Sike-O-Path –predating Mental), the rediculous (and kind of hillarious) title track, and my personal favorite title Belligerent Youth. This definitely didn’t win any awards for originality in the day, but if you just want some competent ripping cross-over, look no further.

By the way, this isn’t an mp3 blog, but if you want to check out a good one, and/or want to hear Bloodcum, hit up: http://truepunkmetal.blogspot.com/. It’s got tons of killer downloads and some cool “personal” stories by someone who was actually around to see most of the bands that I only get to talk about.

Another genre classic in limited picture disc form: here’s Kreator’s beloved Pleasure To Kill, an original picture disc pressing on Noise. Actually that’s not entirely accurate, this version of the record, for reasons I’m not entirely sure of, has an alternate title: “AFTER THE ATTACK”, and contains an extra song of the same name. For this reason it’s particularly desirable with collectors. I feel like it may have been pressed before the actual general release pressing of the album and thus was released in this slightly altered form, or maybe it was just done to confuse people into buying the album twice, but either way, it exists as an interesting variation. I may have mentioned it in a past posting, but typically these pressings of noise lps, as well as some colored vinyl pressings were offered through mail order catalogs that came inside most of their lps, and generally are supposed to be limited to between 3,000-5,000, which was a small amount given vinyl being the dominant format at the time, and that Thrash was hugely popular.

People tend to make a lot of the fact that Kreator are a German band, and that early German thrash is much more raw, and therefore more credible than say American bands coming out at this time. To me the difference has always seemed relatively negligible, although there certainly is some sloppiness on the part of many a German Thrash band, there are plenty from the United States (and the rest of the world of course) that are comparable. It’s true though, the vocal delivery on Pleaure to Kill makes none of the rudimentary attempts at staying on key that some of the bigger bands from the United States were at the time and maybe for that it gets a couple of extra “rawness” points, but other than that it’s a pretty technical affair. Most people drop it as a touch-stone for proto-Death Metal and a lot of the guitar lines and the overall speed of the music definitely make a case for that, it sounds sinister and grim and has enough percision in the execution that it’s only a down-tuning and gurgle vocal away from firmly treading Death Metal territory.

Metal Monday vol. 13:

Here’s a lost classic: Absurd - Drained Of Bodily Chemicals(that’s Scam-017 for the careful reader). Before you protest: this is not the infamous German band with moronic political leanings. This is a should-be-classic Swedish Death Metal band with that muscular and agreeable Sunlight Studios sound. If they had delivered an lp it could have easily been held up with all the greats like Entombed, Dismember, Carnage, etc. Unlike many of the more incestuous Swedish acts Absurd’s members never went onto anything I’m aware of other than the singer doing some time in Expulsion. Originally Drained Of Bodily Chemicals was a cassette release, subsequently it was picked up by the Seraphic Decay/Skindrill guys, presumably for very little in return. One thing that stands out to me a bit about the recording is the fairly natural drum sound which is a little out of the ordinary for the time and place (even some of the stick clicks are left in), but helps inject a little extra energy in the recording. I’m pretty sure this is the first pressing for sale, the 2nd pressing has a pink cover (I THINK). This is definitely in my top 3 Seraphic/Skindrill releases just for overall quality of the songs and powerful performance, worth $40-$50 if you’re interested. B-Side track “See Through Me” is like a mini-Left Hand Path (the song), complete with ominous keyboard overdubs, and horror-movie-soundtrack style leads. All hail the BOSS Metal-Zone.