Mysteries About Life and Death

Toxodeth are a bit of a strange band. Their music is themed around horror movies and the occult and this comes through big time in their sound. They actually use melodies of horror soundtracks, or at least facsimiles of them to convey this sound. And while this album is death metal, it's not what you would typically expect of the genre. It's much more driven on leads and higher parts than the usual very low heavy detuned sound. In fact some of the riffs and lead parts are more reminiscent of speed/heavy metal or thrash metal at the very least, which is very odd of a death metal album. While the "Phantasms" demo was a little more aggressive and straight-on death metal, this release is more focused on technical parts and soloing (but it's certainly not what I would call technical death metal). Overall it's a very interesting and unique album.

The production is pretty low, which is expected for Wilds Rags Records releases and for quite a bit of old school death metal. Everything is audible though, and the lower production actually benefits the sound (those that are into raw and filthy shit would generally agree). The pace is usually mid paced and sometimes fast. The riffs are generally death/thrash-ish and heavy, but as mentioned they splinter off into an almost heavy/speed metal sound at times. The leads are one of the greatest aspects of the album. They elaborate the heavy/speedish tendencies and are played with higher technical proficiency than one might expect from a very early underground Mexican death metal band. Rather than ripping fast noisy solos with grinding rhythms behind them they typically stay mid paced and incorperate interesting and eerie sounding melodies. The vocals aren't particularly prominent. They're mostly low rhaspy growls, and despite not being anything amazing they work with the music well. The rhythm section is all adequate but not outstanding and works with the music well.

This album is interesting and unique, and I recommend it more to fans strange and obscure death metal than people who just want the absolute heaviest shit available. It's a notable part of Mexican death metal history, a great release of the Wild Rags catalogue and overall a worthy album.

Toxodeth's beginnings can be traced back to 1982 where Raul Guzman aspired to be "Mexico's first guitar hero". After a series of demos, the band was picked up by the now infamous Wild Rags Records out of California to release "Mysteries About LIfe and Death".


Essentially, most of these songs are reworked version of songs the band wrote back in the mid 80's. The best way to describe the music here would be raw, technical thrash/death metal, similar to a more underground hybrid of Possessed meets Coroner. Toxodeth however were more than just an underground band merely trying to emulate their influences, they also wove in plenty of classical influences along with some traditional Mexican style acoustic passages to add variety to the sound.


The 9 songs (two of them being instrumentals) individually have quite a few things going on at once. Several of them are more straight-forward thrashers such as "The Beacon" and "Doom Predictions" whereas the true brillance of the band comes out on a song like "Graveyard", where there are no repeating riffs over a 6+ minute time span and the music has more twists and turns than anything Coroner could have written in their hayday. The only true downfall to the album is the production. It has a thin, distant sound, and an obvious limited budget as there are a few parts on here that could have probably been done over to get a tighter overall feel to the songs. You have to keep in mind that the band was very young at the time of the recording, still in their teenage years, white managing to pull off a rather ambitious endeavor...

While this album isn't for those with a small attention span or for people who need the absolute best production while listening to music, it is highly recommended to those looking for an important part of the underground's past in their collection, or for anyone heavily into unorthodox, technical thrash-death.