Holy shit! What's this? Amateur-ish hand drawn cover, cool 80's-ish logo, awful production, ten truckloads of riffs, over-the-top vocals and music that can rip more than a few holes in you. What form of music fulfils all the above requirements? Thrash fucking metal, of course!

This is thrash metal. Make no mistake about it. This is dirty, rotten and filthy thrash. Everything about the production here is crappy. The guitar tone is thin, the drum sound gets annoying if you turn the volume up and the vocals aren't artificial-ized by using high tech equipment and whatnot. Yes, this is what thrash should sound like, but sadly most modern retro-thrash bands (Evile, Bonded By Blood etc.) have an over-polished production that makes their music feel watered down and quite frankly - boring. The mixing job, the production, and everything related to it on THIS demo is what thrash was intended to sound like. Production-wise, this demo would have fit in right with the other albums released in 1984-85.

Perhaps the best way to describe the music would be Slayer meets Exodus. The Exodus feel is not as prominent as the early Slayer influences but are present nonetheless. The sloppy and evil atmosphere is directly influenced by Slayer's early works ('Show no Mercy' [1983] and 'Haunting the Chapel' [1984]) but the demo has the spirit of 'Hell Awaits' (1985) and 'Bonded by Blood' (1985) infused in it. These riffs aren't the least bit groundbreaking but they can make you bang your head, they can make you tap your feet and they draw you in, and that's what really matters. The vocal performance here reminds me of (again!) early Slayer. I just love the execution of the vocals here; fucking evil and just oozing with energy.

The five songs here are all fairly similar but that shouldn't be a problem since this is only a 5-song demo. However, the band should bring in some variety if they ever release a full length album. For a demo, this is damn good. If I had to choose standout songs from the demo, they would be the first 3 songs.

A VERY good demo and I recommend this demo to anyone who loves raw thrash.

Reviewed by MegaHassan
03/05/2009 22:15