Surrender or Die

Make way for the incinerator!!!!!!!!!! Slaughter's third demo is considered a demo? Even before it was re-released it had seven song! I thought demo's had like 2 or 3 songs. Guess these guys needed to make their point clear. This is pure thrash at it's best -fast, fast, fast. Let's look at the third song for fastness, Maim To Please. If it is true that these guys influenced death metal then I guess this is also the place to start. The drum beat is just a rapid beat, no fills just an occasional cymbal here and there. The tempo lets up and down throughout the song, but you can almost imagine the singer letting out a growl of death metal.

The riffs are all pretty cool; they are really either fast or fast and somewhat technical. I think what makes the guitar riffs stand out and come together is the constant beating of the drums. The singing is rather straight forward with a low tone. Almost sometime it could sound like a death metal growl. Sometimes they even throw in the thrash backing vocals where parts of the song is repeated, like in Incinerator.

There are only two problems with this album. Being a demo, of course it is going to have shitty production. The first song Disintegrater has a chainsaw roaring, but when the drums come in is that still the chainsaw or the guitars. Kind of hard to tell. Even though it was re-released (who knows how many times) some of the junk that gets in there can't be cleaned up. I imagine it would be really bad if you were listening to the original recording, but the latter ones aren't to bad. The other problem is the songs get repetitive, so bad that sometimes you feel like you already listened to the that song before. Other than that this album is pure bang your head fucking thrash. Any fans of early death metal or thrash metal should get a hold of this especially if you like really old Slayer.

Slaughter are a highly underrated band. This CD starts off with a disturbing chainsaw attack. It gets right into Disintegrator, which is one and a half minutes of speed riffing. Disintegrator quickly turns into the slower Incinerator. Group vocals and a slow moshy rhythm on Incinerator show that Slaughter were obviously influenced by hardcore punk bands. Tyrant of Hell will skullfuck you with its evil, yet simple, song structure. The CD goes on and on, with great riffs and punk vocals/lyrics (check out the "one, two, fuck you!" lyrics on Shadow of Death and Surrender or Die. They are a salute to Betty Blowtorch).

The entire CD reminds me of Megadeth's early stuff, although it isn't nearly as technical.

Slaughter cover Hellhammer's Massacra on this CD. They do a nice job.

The stand out songs are: Disintegrator, Surrender or Die, and Tales of the Macabre.

The downside to this CD is its low quality. You can tell it is a demo, and the shitty production takes a lot away from the music.

I recommend this to anyone interested in some old fashioned, simplistic thrash.