Speed Metal Sentence

One of the reasons why music in the 90s tended to suck was an overly serious attitude, often times being attributed to things that weren't terribly serious. Everyone recalls the overtly serious attribution of anarchism and punk rock to a Nirvana song that was taken from a friend ripping on Kurt Cobain for smelling like the deodorant his then-girlfriend wore, and to this day people constantly claim a higher meaning to a song that was lampooned by Weird Al Yankovic as being lyrically nonsensical. To Nirvana's credit, they did end up being a bit perplexed at the song's ridiculously lavish critical acclaim and successful sales, in much the same manner people were perplexed at how a silly book like Catcher In The Rye would inspire somebody to kill John Lennon. But thankfully, this sort of overly serious nonsense was not omnipresent, and by the late 90s people were learning to laugh and have fun again.

Enter Cranium, reformed out of the ashes of a short-lived 80s thrash project Legion, with all the grime and filth of the current Teutonic revivalist craze a full 6 or 7 years before it became popular, and all the laughs to put Zimmers Hole to shame. Following after the tradition of Sodom, Tankard and Destruction circa the mid 80s, this power trio goes back to the primordial origins of extreme metal and take the familiar all fast, all the time speed metal approach that made "Persecution Mania" and "Zombie Attack", with all the laughs of the latter and the enormity of the former. Simultaneously, the wild riffing technique has some semblance of the earliest NWOBHM infused offerings of Slayer on "Show No Mercy" and "Haunting The Chapel", while taking a number of vocal cues from the nasally snarl and banshee shrieks of Blitz Ellsworth.

Though definitely an ambitious offering from a musical standpoint, the comedy factor on "Speed Metal Sentence" gets pretty blatant, to the point of being sheer slapstick. The somewhat overlong trial intro gets a bit much and listens like an extended Dave Mustaine rant meets a weak scene from Metalocalypse, and the crowd noise during "Samurai Satan" gets a bit overloud and kind of drowns out the hyper-speed brilliance going on musically, but for the most part this album is the perfect blend of hilarity and aggression expected out of an extreme parody of Tankard's boozing handiwork. In fact, the lead shredding put together by Chainsaw Demon is a cut above the rest, opting for a nice middle ground between the precision shredding of Kirk Hammett and the chaotic noise of Kerry King and actually doing a fair job of differentiating this band from a number of future revivalists. Simultaneously, the closer "Cranium: Crushers Of Christ" stands as one of the most accurate attempts by a revivalist band of recapturing that proto-death metal character of "Seven Churches" that would later be picked up by Chuck Schuldiner, while still keeping it in the general Teutonic paradigm.

Unfortunately, given the fact that this was a revived 80s outfit that was trying to play an older style in a time where everybody was obsessed with rocking out to nu-metal with their pants half down and their junk in their hands, this didn't get the audience it deserved and has largely been passed up for newer bands that are still touring such as Lich King and Gama Bomb. This might be due to skepticism regarding the release period of Cranium's discography or due to a lack of promotion, but it is definitely a problem in dire need of a remedy. For the younger crowd that can't get enough of the current Italian and Greek thrash revivalist craze, this is definitely a gem that will sit well alongside National Suicide and Drunkard, and older school fans of the Teutonic Trio might want to check out this too given that it lives up to the 80s credentials of its membership. Break out the booze and bang your head till your ears bleed mates, here's some 90s thrash that doesn't suck.