Quote (smoked @ Tue - Jun 26 2012 - 14:23:48)
Steve's poops about death metal that I could just go what the hell is he talking about, skim, and then tl;dr
Around 1990, the pursuit of thrash metal was directed at bands with aggressive, heavy riffs played at high speeds. Death metal was expected to have vocals that sounded evil as fuck, and frantic drumming rounded out the ideal band. This was pretty much the ideal album from an unknown band in 1990, nothing groundbreaking like the premiere bands of the time did, just good, fast, simple, evil thrashing. One of the stronger pieces of the style, though it doesn't stand out with the elite thrashy death metal bands of their era like Morbid Angel.
Four songs appeared on their demos, one from the first and three from the second. The style is similar but shows evolution, plus slightly higher speeds and the sections that weren't at blistering velocity have been pretty much eliminated. This results in the album being 27 minutes long, which is an appropriate length for it.
Everything is simple - the drums are mostly straight blasting, the guitars chug and slide power chords with a bit of tremolo picking, and it's structured in even parts. There is quite a bit of character in the performances though, as the drums feel frantic and fit nicely into the pocket (this refers to timing), and the vocals add a bit more to the loose thrashing feel. The vocals are drenched in reverb, sounding so thick that they drown out everything else at times. They sound extremely evil, thick and powerful, pretty much perfect for bands who took German thrash to the extreme. The unfortunate consequence of the vocals being so powerful is that they practically drown out the thin and crunchy guitar tone at times. While thin guitar tones are very characteristic of the time, it could have improved the album to thicken it up a bit so the cymbals and vocals don't cover it up at all.
