The Passing

These folks stand right beside Believer, Sacrament and Tourniquet as one of the finest representatives of the Christian thrash metal wave which was way more than just a myth in the late-80’s/early-90’s. Like another worthy batch from the same roster, the Brits Detritus, they entered the arena a bit late, but quickly established themselves on the scene with their first two instalments. Their debut was a fairly ambitious affair featuring a lot of influences and non-standard, outlandish decisions, siding more with the larger-than-life eclecticism of Tourniquet than with the more clinical, surgical precision of Believer.

A certain lack of focus and a bit too scattered song-writing may have been the reason why this first showing didn’t quite conflagrate the thrash underground, but on the album reviewed here the band seemed to have learnt their lesson only too well. The delivery has been tightened to a fair extent, and although the guys’ more experimental spirit still shows here and there, it’s been put in reins for a large portion of the time. This taming of “the shrew” gives a chance for the razor-sharp riffage to shine, especially on the shorter blitzkriegers like “Renouncement” and the very appropriately-titled “Frantic”, both starting and ending this saga respectively, surrounding a really captivating exhibition of complex classic thrashing that can be served in a more officiant, gothic-flavoured (“The Usurper”) manner or can be made dark and doomy (“Carnival of Madness”), or can nod towards the rich power metal heritage of the guys’ homeland (“As I Turned Away”) with a more epic, more dramatic layout.

However, the skeleton of the album is constructed around these livelier, more immediate semi-technical pieces which effortlessly drill their way through the more engaging templates, helping themselves with the odd more eccentric gimmick, “Ichabod” with spasms of intriguing bass-driven jazzisms, “Forest Of Horrors” with contrasting balladic etudes, “Retaliatory Strike” with dramatic surreal escalations those very characteristic of Believer’s “Sanity Obscure” which seems to be a major influence on this opus. Well, operatic walkabouts and surprising cover versions are not exactly provided here, but the guys already gave their share to the more eclectic side of the genre earlier, now focusing on the more hard-hitting aspect of their repertoire…

and doing a very good job on all counts, blending headbanging fiestas with more progressive visions in a fairly intriguing manner. It was great to see the Christian brotherhood carrying on unperturbed by the groovy/aggro/industrial changes around them, with Believer shooting the impressive “Dimensions” at the same time, and although Tourniquet were preparing to partially betray the front with “Vanishing Lessons”, things didn’t look bad at all. Only that the whole movement went missing shortly after following the latter album’s title, Betrayal popping up at the dawn of the new millennium, seemingly ready for another spell with the music industry.

Actually, it was only the band founder Marcus N. Colon that had popped up, but his introspective musings were strictly personal and individualistic, “Leaving Nevermore” featuring some minimalistic atmospheric quasi-industrial, and “In Remembrance of Me” courting the gothic metal wave of the past decade with the casual more aggressive flair; neither too bad in any way, but very far from the visionary thrashy stance of old... signs of betrayal? I don’t think so; rather pensive, introspective variations of sounds and styles the once valiant youthful batch never found the time to explore earlier.

The Passing is a thrash album that demonstrates some decent musical ability, but an overall lack of interesting ideas. There's just little that is memorable about the music here, however well it might be played. The only real thing that set these guys apart from other thrash acts of the time was that they were Christians and thus had a Christian slant to their lyrics. I will say that this album is far better than their earlier record, Renaissance By Death.

The vocals tend to skip around, sometimes with a mid-ranged thrashy singing, sometimes with a hardcore yelling, and they even have guest vocalists on a couple songs. The bass is audible, and does get it's moments to shine here and there (e.g. Whispers of Chaos). The guitar work is very good, though the songs start to get repetitive and monotonous by the end of the album. But considering that the entire album is only about 45 minutes long, I guess cutting a couple-few songs was out of the question.

So, to sum up: the musicianship on this disc is good, though it's not terribly original, and is flat by the end of the record. I wouldn't necessarily recommend against this album, but there's really no reason to go out looking for it either.