The Law

It's often said that the Americans from Exhorder had a very significant influence on the emergence of groove metal, although it was Pantera who popularized it on a larger, global scale. Who copied, I'm not going to judge. I know, however, that in 1990 the former released a decent thrash metal hit with residual groove influences in the form of "Slaughter In The Vatican", while the latter had already released the promising and heralding this new style "Power Metal" and "Cowboys From Hell". The word made flesh and the next thing that happened to both of these groups in 1992 was the transition into groove metal officially. For now, however, I will focus on Exhorder and their "The Law" - an album that brought significant changes and revealed a different face compared to what the band presented just two years earlier.

Contrary to the controversies often associated with the transition to groove metal, Exhorder on their second lp did not completely distance themselves from the style presented on "Slaughter In The Vatican" and - like few others - maintained a satisfactory level. It should be noted that on "The Law" there were numerous jerky or marching patterns, a more rock'n'roll nature of the riffs, screaming or heavy metal-like vocals and a natural, although quite dirty sound, buuut these changes did not eliminate the thrash metal wilderness known from the debut, and there is still no place for ballad fragments (unlike the well-known band), even though acoustic guitar parts appear in a few moments. Listen to "Soul Search Me", "The Truth" or "Unforgiven", where you can clearly hear that Pantera would not be able to play at such paces, even within the groove metal style. Besides, the album includes, of course, more human and catchy, but still good songs such as the title track, "I Am The Cross", "(Cadence Of) The Dirge" and "Un-Born Again". And here we come to an interesting point, because the last one mentioned is the only one where the then bassist of the group, Frankie Sparcello, can be heard slapping above the guitars - in the remaining songs Vinnie recorded the bass. Another interesting (and successful) point of "The Law" is a cover of a classic from the Black Sabbath repertoire - "Into The Void". Exhorder's interpretation perfectly preserved the spirit of the original amd added a nice double voice to the Kyle's singing. Finally, it's worth mentioning that the lyrics have undergone an important change, unfortunately the previous vulgarity has been removed. It seems like a minus, but in fact, the more normal text layer complements the new, more accessible style quite well.

From the above description, the most coherent material may not emerge, but in practice there are no such jumps between grooves and thrash speeds, which - as I mentioned - were not completely pushed aside on "The Law". Because the second album by Exhorder very sensibly discovers a new, groove metal version of the band and at the same time it's one of the first albums of such importance for this trend, which showed a different, modern way of playing metal at that time. In fact, "The Law" is not as good as "Slaughter In The Vatican", although it does not change the fact that Exhorder, despite the transition to groove metal, managed to maintain high quality. At least until the band still existed in the early 1990s.

Originally on A bit of subjectivism...in metal

It’s curious how you can end up influencing another band, and they end up influencing you in the process. That’s sort of the dynamic between Exhorder and Pantera. Pantera heard Exhorder’s demos of chunkier and more belligerent thrash, leading to a more refined and purely groovy variety of metal on Cowboys from Hell. It seems that Exhorder were also listening to Pantera around this time and the influencers became the influenced on The Law. The Law shows the grooves from Slaughter in the Vatican rising to prominence and getting it’s strangling arms around the main rhythm on this one. Groove is way more important on this album even though it keeps up a high-speed thrash tempo. Because of that groove, we end up with an album that I feel is tighter, better-defined, and crunchier than Slaughter in the Vatican. Slaughter had a harder time sticking with a rhythm and digging it in due to all the excess speed and swift riff changes that sacrificed memorability, while The Law is a more collected, mature beast that lays its riffs bare and solid.

You can already tell how much more developed Exhorder are on this album by how much deeper the riffing cuts. The grooves are here, but they don’t sacrifice any of the thrashing intensity, in fact, it makes it more impactful and prominent. The slower moments allow the faster passages to feel more rewarding as they get built up to and let off from. It provides a level of motion in the music that allows it to feel harder hitting. The best example of this is probably on “Unforgiven” which starts off with a brief thrash passage before descending into a pit of low, slow trudging grooves before coming to a head with some ominous dirge-like guitar harmonies and then breaking back into a brawling thrash barrage that feels all the nastier as it gets ramped up. This also shows a willingness to move beyond simple thrashing if a song needs some slowdown to be more crushing. This is the case with the Black Sabbath cover “Into the Void” which moves much slower than the rest of the album, but it benefits from the extra bass, the crunch, and Kyle Thomas’ grizzled shouts help make this into an extra heavy rendition of a classic doom track with a stomp all its own. These slower songs and passages add a lot to this album to make it feel more balanced, but also punchier.

The mix on The Law is decidedly tilted towards being crunchier than concrete. The brawling, rumbling riffage has a solid low end to it with a lot of bass that focuses on being gnarly. So much so that even the funky bits on “Un-born Again” sound mean, making them add something to the song rather than subtracting like such a weird addition would normally do. This is all thanks to the extra bass in the guitar and more crushing production. The way the riffs on this thing roll and rumble, the way they syncopate and stomp, the way Chris Nail pounds the drums, it always works to have more weight to the low end. It turns songs that were already mosh-starters into full on volleys of metallic body blows perfectly tuned for headbanging until your neck is red and swollen.

Then there’s the matter of Kyle Thomas’ vocals. He’s still doing his signature blues-meets-hardcore snarl from Slaughter in the Vatican and he’s belting out his lines with all the fury of a starving pitbull and this adds even further to the mean-ness and bruising character of The Law. His vocals lunge at you in a similar way to the riffs and it makes the experience even more predatory and vicious. He also engages in a few singing styles other than simply shouting. There’s the speed-singing which adds liveliness, as well as the slower and more imposing singing in the sabbath-doom passages of the cover of “Into the Void” and “Cadence of the Dirge”. He syncopates his delivery to the grooves and makes the rhythm feel more energetic.

There are some reasons I prefer this Exhorder album to Slaughter in the Vatican, the prime one being a matter of memorability. I find myself coming back to songs on The Law more often mainly due to the riffing. Very few of these riffs blow right past me and they sound bigger, better defined, and weightier than those on the previous album. Kyle Thomas’s lyrics are catchier and there’s more variety between each of the songs with concern to riffs and rhythm. Even though this album is still super groovy, it maintains the speed of it’s predecessor without becoming a blur, leaving a very break-neck album for all of us out here. There’s also the matter of the production. It’s beefier and clearer than the production on Slaughter, and as a result it cuts deeper and is easier to understand at the same time. It could also be that this has more of the kind of plunging riffs that make me want to smash my foot through the floor. All of this makes for an album that I feel gets underappreciated and hides some killer strength. From the beginning of “Soul Search Me” to the end of “Cadence of the Dirge”, this album is perfect for just rampaging.

If nothing else, Exhorder's sophomore effort The Law is a study in how an album can be both simultaneously more interesting and less interesting than its predecessor. Wrought of the same thrashing cloth as Slaughter in the Vatican, there are nonetheless several components to this that mark an evolutionary process towards a thrash band that might have eventually resonated with me. The basic ingredients are much the same, but there's a slightly more clinical cut to the riffing. They were always fairly taut and semi technical in the guitar patterns, but here they seem to be going for a slightly more technical 'sound', if that makes any sense. Many of the progressions had parallels to West Coast thrash bands like the great Testament, Forbidden, Dark Angel or even the Heathen sophomore, but placed within the tougher context of their very grounded, constant barrage of aggression. The Law is a more 'musical' effort, with greater contrasts and dynamics and maybe about 2% more risk...

...it's not enough, unfortunately. While they've gotten away from the Scott Burns production I wasn't too fond of on the debut, the guitars here sound even more processed and tingy. This was not an unusual practice for this side of thrash, but the real issue is that as a whole the album feels so dry and boxy and completely lacks an atmosphere. Take something like Believer's Sanity Obscure, and place it next to this, and you see just how much better that album is due to the dark mood conjured up by its musical choices. Here it fees like Exhorder came into the studio with another set of decent riffs and got the bare minimum out of them. More reverb, more layers, more textures, I don't know what combination of these it would take to make this sound like more than an unfinished demo reel in places. When the whole band is firing on all cylinders and hitting some momentum, as in the earlier stages of "Unborn Again", it's a little easier to ignore, but even then I'm a little bothered. There are other issues, like the fact that the clean guitar intros and other segues on the album just don't really match up to the aggressive material, and some of the little experiments like the funky bass parts (also in "Unborn Again") seem like cheesy, ill-fitting ideas. Granted, the bass gets a little more distinct there than on the debut, but not in the way I would have liked...

This is an album which doesn't seem all too confident of what it wants. The traditional, woozy dark blues of the Black Sabbath cover seem incongruent with the faster thrashing, although hearing Kyle sing this one definitely sounds like a prequel to Phil Anselmo's band Down. A lot of the chuggier thrash parts throughout are terribly boring, where the more rabid neck-jerkers like "The Truth" seemed half-way to decent if they could only have stuck a few more memorable riffs amid the very surgical mute picking parts. There is plenty to please the mosh fanatic, but they simply had no capacity to churn out thrash 'hits' like a lot of their comparable West Coast brethren like Exodus and Testament were doing years earlier. Kyle's style still fits the mold of the music, but for some reason the mix makes him seem a little more isolated, separate from the instruments. Half the lyrics on this are pedestrian straight talking rubbish, the other half are better, but I guess I should just be happy there is no anthem to anally raping an individual until she's dead, which would have been as awkward and out of place here as on Slaughter.

In the end, there really just isn't all that much to recommend about The Law. We're not exactly dealing with some bumbling abomination of a sophomore. I've heard far worse...but I feel like the more consistent Slaughter in the Vatican will rightly retain the higher cult status as the years roll on. Not that I'm fond of that one, but this is a slight step down and sideways. It's just not one for the memorybooks, and the competition was simply too large, especially in terms of the songwriting on something like A Vulgar Display of Power. Love or hate Pantera, I often find myself doing both, but I'd rather listen to "A New Level" or "Regular People (Conceit)" individually than this entire album. Some proper thug jams, bro.

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Thrashing their way through the mid 80's and early 90's, metal legends Exhorder have carved a name for themselves within the Louisiana underground thrash and hardcore crowd. Namely, their 1987 demo “Slaughter in the Vatican”, and 1990 LP of the same name have shown the world a band that can stretch the technical and visceral limits of a genre as well as set their own unique stylistic nuances – a group of industrious musicians that can deliver vicious thrash of the highest quality with no image or pretense, and zero desire for mass appeal or record sales. While the overall feeling on “Slaughter in the Vatican” was a Sepultura-meets-Black Flag of sorts, “The Law” has crystalized the band's own unique aesthetic and style of playing – a style that has unintentionally influenced countless bands in the 90's and decades to come. Here the band has shed most of their hardcore influences and death-metal inspired tremolo picking, taken the more slow, grinding rhythmic musculature of the past, and had it amplified throughout. The results are nine crushing, groove-oriented tracks that don't lose sight of the thrash aggression or technicality, with a killer guitar tone to boot.

While “Slaughter in the Vatican” was a labor of love – its material having been written and demoed several times over the span of almost half a decade, “The Law” was to be written and recorded in a shorter period of time. Because of this, the band decided to re-introduce two tracks off their 1986 “Get Rude” demo - “Unforgiven” and “Wake the Dead”, which was renamed to “Incontinence”, into their template of six brand new, original songs. Additionally, they provide an excellent cover of Black Sabbath's “Into the Void”, which Toni Iommi himself said to have thought was the best Black Sabbath cover yet. “Unforgiven” happens to be one of my all time favorites from the band, and perhaps the first ever song I have heard from Exhorder many years ago, when I was first starting to get into metal. It's a stout, little brute of a track – with a savage, primal opening that leads into several swaying riff/tempo changes and solos. “Incontinence” isn't my favorite track, but it serves well as a pretty heavy instrumental, though I somewhat prefer the 1986 demo. You might feel that six new tracks is rather piddly, but remember, Exhorder practice quality over quantity here. Everything is what to be expected of these masters – there is no filler, all killer.

Comparatively, there is an inherit natural feel to this album, both in its style of playing as well as its overall production, despite the ultra-processed guitar tone. The band continues to throw out mindless repetition, sing-along choruses and predictable structures, and here the album sometimes sounds almost improvisational in its structural integrity and complexity – almost like a thrash jam session in its unpredictable ebb and flow. The most immediately noticeable aspect is the patent, treble-saturated guitar-tone that is insurmountably vicious, and completely redefines the chainsaw sound. Chris Nail's drums sound much more resonant and organic than before. He doesn't employ the rapid, death-metal inspired thrash attack and blast beats as often, even during the faster parts, but instead shows off a rather large repertory of intricate and ingenious double bass patterns to carry much of the swerving cadences, best heard on “I Am The Cross”. Whether the production is actually better here than on “Slaughter in the Vatican” depends on who you ask; although I prefer the overall aesthetic of the previous album, the production works perfectly here. I cannot imagine “Unforgiven” or “Unborn Again” being nearly as effective with a different production.

The album is definitely groove-heavy. The album as a whole relies a lot more on constant surging, yet complex rhythms than it does the blunt thrashing riff onslaught of the past, although the hefty riffs are still plenty. Additionally, the album rarely breaks into the sudden, hyper-rapid thrash fits and jarring tempo changes, which were decorated all throughout “Slaughter in the Vatican”, opting to churn at a relatively mid-pace. Despite the more rhythmic tendencies, there is still a lot here that separates “The Law” from your average groove-metal fare such as “Lamb of God” or “Machine Head”. For one, the simplistic, few-note start-stop riffs and repetitive song structures that define the groove metal genre overall, are minimal to non-existent here. Axemen Vinnie LaBella and Jay Ceravolo again prove to be masters of their trade. The guitarists relentlessly strum away as the fingers constantly crawl all over the fretboard, churning out complex riffs with abandon. On all of the songs, the listener is plunged through a jungle of convoluted, syncopated to hell rhythms, intricate structures, meter changes, and furious, chromatic riff savagery.

On “Slaughter in the Vatican”, the guitar duo has flirted with some ominous clean guitar parts on two tracks – during the beginning of “The Tragic Period” and at the end of the title track. Here they expand upon this talent – having injected masterfully crafted clean guitar passages for the outros of “Soul Search Me”, “(Cadence of) The Dirge”, and “The Truth”, which bridges to the title track that uses the same clean passage during the bridge section. Guitar solos were never pinnacle to the Exhorder's thrash prescription, opting to flash little shred bursts here and there. Here, the soloing is even less important than it was than in the past, rather the band includes some funk-inspired wah effects and slap bass patterns courtesy of Frankie Sparcello (R.I.P.), although these traits are not as prominent as some reviewers state.

The biggest exemplifiers of the band's new found, patent style are the mid-paced crushers “Soul Search Me”, “I Am The Cross”, and the title track – songs that are as dense and chaotic as the savage Louisiana Bayou. “Soul Search Me” is decorated with harmonized, diminished-chord arpeggios throughout, and “I Am The Cross” is most notable for its crushing opening of arresting riffage and drumming. The title track is a live favorite, possessing the album's meatiest, most imposing riffs and has interesting, extrospective lyrics dealing with innate laws of nature pitted against man-made laws. The band hasn't totally abandoned their rapid tempos – “Unborn Again” is an utterly vicious, straight to the jugular thrasher, and next to “Unforgiven”, is the fastest, heaviest and thrashiest song on the album. “The Truth” is a short little riff-dense thrasher that I see as sort of a prelude to the title track, as it showcases similar lyrical topics. On the other hand, “(Cadence of) The Dirge” is possibly the closest the band has ever came to full on groove metal, with its crushing, single power-chord strums and start-stop patterns. However, the band still retains their own brand of elaborated structural nuances and riff changes, as well as a masterful, sludge-drenched vocal performance from Kyle Thomas.

With the utter complexity and trickiness of the guitarwork, combined with the rhythmic unpredictability and the shearing, treble-drenched guitar tone, the guitar parts are often somewhat hard, sometimes impossible to discern and follow along to. In these instances, it is up to the gruff vocal parts of Kyle Thomas to give these songs a sense of coherence as the guitars rage in the background. Here he displays a similar vocal timbre as the last album, however he doesn't vocalize as fast as often here, and shows a little more melodic control, despite sounding just as, if not more pissed-off. He continues the Dark-Angel-esque manner of shouting large volumes of lyrics, however, with the five year difference between the penning of the lyrics of this album and the last, the lyrics are markedly more mature here, and less focused on leisurely violence, though the lyrics still largely deal with topics of religion. “Unforgiven” deals with sexual blasphemy, while “I Am The Cross” continues the haughty boasts heard on songs such as “Desecrator” - taking on the first person narrative of the oppressive, supercilious churches. On the other hand, “Soul Search Me”, “Unborn Again”, “The Truth”, and the title track are direct attacks on those who blindly follow organized religion. “(Cadence of) The Dirge” is a song about grief and burial, which seems rather fitting, as it is the last song Exhorder ever put to tape, and pretty much one of the final words on the thrash genre before it imploded in the early 90's.

Exhorder are one of my all time favorite metal bands for a reason. They have proven to be unique, top notch musicians through their two great records, without the need for image, mass appeal, or clichés. Despite their brutality, they have proven to have excellent musical instinct, navigating through the dredges of the 90's with the compass of their own, perfecting their own unique brand of thrash. Who knows what direction Exhorder could have taken if they continued to write, and who knows what direction heavy metal could have taken in the 90's if more bands were more directly influenced by this, rather than those who were influenced by them. One can only imagine.

"Do what thou will shall be whole of the law"

While it can require a jarring adjustment at first, The Law settles into it's indignant confines nicely, embodying a more compact and visceral take on the genre-stretching aesthetics more commonly associated with Dark Angel's Time Does Not Heal. The only attribute that Exhorder really shares in common with Pantera is regarding Thomas' hoarse half-shouts. Even at that, nearly everything Vulgar Display of Power does well, The Law most certainly does better.

The guitar tone is as divisive a characteristic as there ever could be, truly redefining the expression "love it or hate it". The lack of restraint is if anything endearing, as trebly waves of distortion intertwine with Nail's bouncy percussive backings and the occasional slower, more atmospheric passage. When only one guitar channel is present the result can be a little wanting, but when both floodgates open the mid-range fills in nicely and the sonic imbalances become something of an afterthought. It of course helps to have a good pair of headphones, which tend to scoop in favor of the low end, exhibiting The Law's officious, gritty tone at it's best. Regarding the tone, the closest comparison I would make if my arm was twisted would be Nuclear Assault's Something Wicked, which featured equally wafting -albeit more balanced- swirls of distortion.

Right before the entire structure of the thrash scene imploded in on itself, Exhorder found themselves amongst the few stalwarts still making strides in both aggression and excess. Presenting both The Law and Overkill's Horrorscope to detractors who claim that thrash was all but flat-lined by the time the '90s rolled around will result in ample eaten words. Dark Angel could arguably be included in this privileged group as well, but their attempt at a progressive, protracted take on the Bay Area sound in Time Does Not Heal bored as much as it enthralled. Exhorder was wise enough to draw many of the same cards, but also knows when to cut and run when the proceedings start to stagnate. Many of these tracks remind me of "Pain's Invention, Madness" or "Act of Contrition", only half as long and twice as concise. Exhorder doesn't have 246 riffs, but they don't need to stretch it over 67 minutes, either.

Then we come to Thomas' irritated vocal delivery. His approach embodies some sort of bizarre hybrid of Anselmo's mid-range barking and Ron Rinehart's syllable-spewing tantrums. It's atonal, grizzled, and angry sounding. Other than some puzzling attempts at drawn out syllables drenched in effects like during the end of "Soul Search Me", he certainly accomplishes most of what he sets out to do. Even at that, the vocals play second-fiddle to the acerbic riffs, which induce ample head-bobbing though the use of abrupt tempo changes and careful implementation of the almighty groove. Look at the first minute of "I Am the Cross", which doesn't necessarily lose any momentum when the vocals come in, but truly rips the floorboards out from underneath the listener well before that point.

The Law's only true detraction would come in the form of Sparcello's popping, clangy base timbre, which save for the intro of "Unborn Again" might as well not exist at all. The guitars are just too attention-grabbing for such a tiny, meager bass tone to gain much ground anyway. There is a decent amount of variety, mainly in the form of funk-infused breakdowns during "Unborn Again" and the darker atmosphere summoned during the closer "(Cadence of) The Dirge" along with the passably-executed Black Sabbath cover. As such, I find it hard to locate faults in The Law without splitting hairs to the point of obscenity. It thrashes, it grooves, and it kills.

The year 1992 was officially the year that thrash metal fell apart, after slowing down and becoming less aggressive the previous year. A few exceptions are there, namely Demolition Hammer's "Epidemic of Violence," but this was where Pantera's version of groove metal really took over. Pantera did face some controversy over the release of "Vulgar Display of Power," much of it aimed directly at this album and the influences Pantera took from it.

While there are some comparisons to be made between the two albums, one shouldn't mistake this for a full blown sound-a-like version of "VDoP." By contrast, "The Law" is a senisble approach to blending aggressive thrash with mid-tempo groove, something the thrash genre had been dabbling for a few years by that point. It ultimately comes off as slightly less than half groove and slighty more than half thrash. Of course the attitude and ferocity implemented by the band and their vicious singer in Kyle Thomas keeps this from sinking into the mid-tempo drudgery that Pantera found themselves in around this same time frame. One could pick up on where Phil Anselmo's bark from this same era came from considering Thomas' own vocal work here, but obviously the latter vocalist is more motivated and more aggressive here.

Although this album makes attempts to blend both the pure thrash fury of its debut and the more mid-tempo groove that thrash had been hinting at, there are a few pure manifestations of both genres. The mainly thrash songs include those such as the intense "I Am the Cross" and the full on "Un-Born Again," the latter of which exhibits a vicious scream towards the end in an era which such things were growing less and less common. The songs that are primarily mid-tempo include the closer in "(The Cadence Of) The Dirge," though I would point out that songs like this are more motivated and less prone to stagnation and come off better than 90% of what the entire genre put forth.

The remaining songs here are a mixture of the two genres. "Incontinence" is a good example, where it seems half the song is mid-tempo stomp that morphs into a full speed thrasher by the two and a half minute mark. "Unforgiven" is pretty similiar in that regard, then there's "Soul Search Me" which goes for the jugular during the verses before moving into an unusually slow pace at the end that closes out the song. It partly feels unnecessary, sort of just floating along there at the end but it isn't too terribly offensive. One would also be remiss not to mention the "Into the Void" cover song, which is one of the best Black Sabbath covers I've heard in a long time. It takes the song an accentuates the original heaviness into something even more. Not as good as the original but pretty damn close all things considered.

There isn't a single song here not worthy of hearing, a rare find for 1992. It stands as one of the better metal albums of the time, unfortunately being completely overshadowed by Pantera's "Vulgar Display of Power." Had the sounds of this album had as much influence on the metal world as its contemporary, then metal in the 1990's decade would have much different. Thus it was not meant to be, but this makes an excellent listen, the final testament from a band who never have recieved the attention they deserved. A woefully overlooked album in its own right, and deserves to be heard by any thrash fan as well as those who often ponder how thrash and mid-tempo groove can peacefully co-exist in the heavy metal medium.

Their debut, Slaughter In Vatican, was very thrash for 1990. It was released in a period of general crises in thrash metal and this The Law shows some of the viruses that would have caused the death of thrash metal. The most obvious and famous one is groove. It’s so evident and clear to anyone if you listen to this album. Anyways, I must admit that I like this album much more than the other ones that featured these damaging influences.

What really blows my mind is the guitars tune. Already in their debut there was a truly pounding guitars sound but here is almost unbelievable. If you remember the Exodus sound in that period, here we can find that tune but here it’s far more scratchy and devastating with plenty of treble distortions on the amplifiers. The songs are a good bland of fastest parts with some down tempo and groove mid paced parts; the hyper clear production exalts all the instruments, transforming the guitars sound in an impenetrable wall.

The drums are clear cut but not pounding, creating a prefect musical detachment from the hyper artificial guitars. The only thing that seems a bit triggered is the bass drum that sounds so similar to groups like Heathen and Overkill in that period. One of the fastest tracks here is “Unforgiven” with plenty of sudden restarts under the sign of fast bass drums triplets and up tempo. The opener shows also some arpeggios and the classic faster mid paced riffs that are so common in this genre.

The violence level is always high, thanks also to fast bass drums of “I Am The Cross”. “Unborn Again” is the most progressive tracks of the album because it shows some funky bass parts and different guitars. The vocals are a violent, pissed off copy of the ones by Anselmo and all the songs, generally, are very similar to the Pantera compositions for style and attitude. Also some groove tempo parts are very similar but here everything is far heavier.

Really, I’m not able to describe the damned guitars tone, and reaching the end of this album could be very dangerous for your ears, or better, for your mental sanity. It’s like being close to a continue chainsaw that tries to cut a door made of metal. Obviously, the thrash metal influences here are far less present and audible than on their debut and I can describe this album “as if Pantera were thrasher and with more balls”. There is also an excellent cover of “Into The Void” by Black Sabbath and, with these sounds, it’s even more doom and heavy.

At the end, I feel a bit hesitant which category of listeners I can recommend this album to. There are several fast parts but it’s necessary you to forget a bit the thrash metal to jump into the groove genre. You all know how much I hate groove but if it’s well filtered through violence and a bunch of damned heavy and restless riffs, there are no problems at all. Just avoid listening to it if you already have the headache that day.

This isn't quite as good as the album that came before it, but it's still quite enjoyable. It tends to try to stretch the boundaries of thrash by inserting the random funky solo into things, but well, the funk isn't distracting, so that's a good thing, but when all is said and done, it's more "yet another thrash album" then the heavy-as-fuck destruction mayhemfuck skullwreck that was the first album.

That said it's really good, and quite enjoyable. And Pantera were never quite this fucken heavy and pissed off, as much as Phil Anselmo would like to claim otherwise. This is a straight up THRASH monster of an album... throw in Kyle's really fucking fast vocal delivery, which was hinted at on Slaughter of the Vatican (Desecrator), but only comes in full fucking circle on stuff like Unborn Again... then there's some slower stuff, like the final song Cadence of the Dirge (which isn't quite as slow as it is a groove monsterbeast), or the DEAD FUCKING ON cover of Into the Void... man, that song was heavy in '71, it's heavy in '92, that song just rules, and they make it rule as much as the original.

There's The Truth, with that total Dark Angel "The New Priesthood" riffset in the middle... there's the fast-and-midpaced alternating riffage of I Am the Cross, and the absolute crusher of an opener in Soul Search Me, and the crazy dynamics of The Law with its psychadelic outro contrasting with its occasionally-loud (not blastbeats, think random jarrings) drums. And there's that fucked up guitar tone. This kinda sounds like the bastard son of the previous album and that first Coroner demo. It's OUT THERE, and yeah it's heavy.

So this is a good album. It's a worthy addition to every thrash collection. And it's better than Vulgar Display of Power ;-)