French death/thrash metal band's third album 'Sublime Dementia' (1993) is great and rather warped affair. The band were on roll and decided to put out a mini-album next. 'Cross the Threshold' is a mixture of 2 new tracks, a re-recording, a Slayer cover, and 2 cuts from the latest album.

Let's inspect the new songs first. 'No Tears to Share' continues in the album's style, but its new trick is great melody work during waltz beat and wacky operatic female vocals. The vibe is very much romantic, like their countrymen Misanthrope usually have, with uglier death metal moments. It's the band's longest song, but with varying parts, doesn't feel that way. The title track is a doomier affair, a distant cousin of Paradise Lost of that era. Classical-tinged guitar solo/lead section is ace. Both of these new songs became live favourites, and I think that speaks enough of their quality.

'Malignant Growth' was done is the style of the new album, making the song more epic and less thrashy. A very good version. 'Subject to Spirit' is a shortened version and much leaner version of the song. Slayer's mighty 'Mandatory Suicide' is a good cover. More glowly vocals aren't as good a fit as the original ones, and you can heard it's not played by the same guys. The sound is also more airy, but also with Loudblast stylings.

The naughty cover painting by Bolek Budzyn certainly worked as a selling point, I am sure about that. What is weird is that this originally came out as cassette and CD editions only. On the release day, magnifying glasses were sold out all over France... Generally, this is a great EP release from the band at their peak; the next album 'Fragments' (1998) was a huge disappointing! Thankfully the band got back on the track later on. For the fans of peculiar death metal.

Rating: 9- (out of 10) ratings explained

Reviewed by Lane
12/11/2022 20:22