"Mayhemic Destruction"A bootleg (hell, that's the only way you can get ancient, obscure metal these days), presumably mastered from crappy vinyl, although I can't hear any scratches or pops at all. The music style is very unique, with a heavy-duty rhythm dominating each and every song...think "Seek & Destroy" by Metallica. Well, the title track is actually a thrash-metal song...in fact it's practically grindcore! A classic, essential piece of mid-80's metal, and one I'm quite happy to get on CD, bootleg or no.
There's four "bonus" tracks, taken from The Arrival by some band called Lethal, who I've never even heard of before...they're something of a Helstar clone, with real crappy vocals (I can't figure out if it's a man or woman singing.)
"Face of Despair"Since their debut was so brutal, I quickly bought their followup on CD when it came out, thinking it would be just as grand. No such luck. There's nothing really wrong with this album, but nothing special about it either. Their super-rhythmic style works well on the songs "I Am Immortal" and "Martyrs of Eternity", but the rest gets awfully repetitive.
"Rebellious Youth" (CDR)This album was released outside Australia with the title Every Dog Has Its Day, to the resounding indifference of metal fans worldwide. (I didn't even know it existed until ten years after its 1991 release.) Turns out I wasn't missing much...the sound is even more generic and derivative than Face of Despair, and "Access Denied" even rips off the descending riff of Kreator's "Toxic Trace". On the other hand, the artwork I was sent for this CDR turned out to be too horribly compressed & distorted to print out for liners, and since I *hate* having CDs without artwork, I might pick up a cheap copy on eBay for the hell of it.
"Revolution of the Mind" (CDR)In 1998, the band reformed just long enough to put out this demo collection, which comprises three new songs, three rerecorded songs, and two live tracks. The only real difference that stands out is their new lead singer, whose grating voice ruins any potential enjoyment of this music. (Their lyrical skills have atrophied considerably, too -- "Voices" basically consist of the refrain "Trying to stop the voices calling in my head" repeated over and over and over again.) As with the previous CD, the artwork I got for it sucks balls, though thankfully the font was large enough to manage a marginally readable printout. (I asked the guy who send me these to rescan the artwork at a higher resolution, he merely converted the existing jpeg's to TIF files...ACK!!! Stupid fucking people!!) Still, I wouldn't mind getting proper artwork for this one, since it's unlikely that I'll ever upgrade this one.
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