I Will Fight No More Forever

This interesting band stopped fighting with the music industry too early; they only danced for about five years before laying down the weapons. Still, they managed to release the album reviewed here, something which many underground heroes never even came close to dreaming about. They already did a fairly good job on the demo stage, first with “The Fall of Individualism” which saw them standing beside their colleagues from the American speed/power metal movement, coming up with a roughly produced, but highly inspired concoction of power, speed and quite a bit of thrash recalling Have Mercy and Ulysses Siren on the more intriguing moments. A few months later the guys made an even bolder statement with the superb “Controlled Reaction”, four compositions of outstanding spastic, hectic technical thrash which put them alongside luminaries like Realm, Watchtower, and Toxik.

This last instalment should have served as the backbone for a very interesting full-length debut, but the accumulated inertia was irrevocably lost by the time the band eventually succeeded in jumping on the official release wagon with the album reviewed here. The early-90’s were hardly the most favourable times for old school-oriented exploits, but the guys had to give it a try although the intricate thrashing from the last demo wasn’t the dominant motif anymore. It’s certainly present, but more as an assisting tool rather than a guiding light as the band had tried to expand their palette in a way similar to Toxik’s “Think This”, but the final result is a tad less coherent and more scattered with more diversity offered, not always for the better.

The album begins in the best possible manner with “Cults of Unreason”, a smattering technical thrasher with great atmospheric additives and supreme melodic lead sections, some of the finest to come out of the early-90’s, all this greatness contained within 3.5 highly eventful min. The magnanimity of this overpowering opener is nowhere achieved later, the band serving some progressive power metal instead, moving towards Crimson Glory and Fates Warning with the cool melodic shredder “Banisher”. “Melanin” tries something funky and playful for a change, the supposed joke track here which gives way to whole “12 Angry Men” where thrash returns mixed with power metal the hard lashing guitars often “besieged” by brilliant melodic pirouettes. “Social Syndrome” is a dark power metal hymn which suddenly starts galloping with the best out there, greatly enhancing its headbanging potential. The title-track is a weird downbeat semi-ballad with voices and samples embedded into its volatile structure. “Novocaine Response” brings back the more aggressive, thrashier ways of execution alongside choppy, jumpy rhythmic patterns which never develop beyond the mid-pace, but create plenty of intense moments some reaching the semi-galloping parametres on this admirable, engaging progressiver. “Testing Ground” is a cool minimalistic piece without too many twists and turns, something which acts like Savatage and Queensryche would be quite happy to have in their repertoire; and “Reworked” bemuses with largely doomy and semi-balladic arrangements the more stylish moments on it reminding of Confessor.

A delivery of the kind requires a fairly capable clean vocalist, and the man behind the mike doesn’t disappoint notching up the atmosphere with his highly emotional at times tirades, covering a wide gamut of octaves with ease without overdoing it. The big application of nuances and shades is again debatable, but in the long run this is a progressive metal recording, and from this point-of-view there’s not much to complain about as most of the criteria for this genre have been ticked. The song structuring is a bit simplistic, though, the band relying on the stylish riff-patterns to pull it through rather than creating challenging mazey configurations which could have worked on all counts as the guys by all means possessed the requisite skills to stitch them successfully. It’s just whenever the spontaneous technical thrash exuberance of the last demo shows up (the awesome opener, to give the most prominent example), it easily overshadows the more conventional progressive metal formulas, and one may find it hard to fully savour the latter as his/her attention would be directed forward, anticipating something as striking to occur. Consequently, this opus works better as separate displays of undisputable genius than as one seamless whole.

Once the band put themselves on the official release map, it was mission accomplished for them. They had no reasons to continue fighting with the flippant music industry, especially not during those most transformational times which didn’t have a particularly soft spot for retro progressive metal heroisms. The time’s right now for those, though; never say forever…

Last year, I started looking for obscure thrash bands that didn't make it to the "popular bands" list. I was looking for some weird stuff to get and widen my listening horizon.

One of this bands is Kinetic Dissent (KD from now on). KD may not a pioneer in their brand of speed/thrash metal, but they play it fine. There is a very "positive feeling" in this album. It reminds me of the old Helloween attitude, but most of the songs are based on minor chords, as opposed to the german guys.

This album shows a mix between speed metal and a more modern thrash influences, even though it sounds "old school" for 1991. The production is not as clear as I would like it to be. Sometimes, the sound is too bassy, so you can't hear those little leads and bass bits that they play.

The title track has all sorts of influences and tempo changes, while "Banished" is a great headbanger with good riffing. They do have some weak spots in the structures. Songs like "Testing Ground" are hard to get into and have no hooks or choruses to get you in. KD lacks aggression and the "raw edge" that this music style has. It seems they never really "get it on".

I wonder where these guys go, because this album is not bad. But considering the time frame when they released this album, when thrash was winding down, I guess this album is the longest they got.