We Will Destroy... You Will Obey!!!

I’m really sort of surprised at myself for not having been more familiar with Dekapitator. I pride myself on knowing the better bands out there in the modern day, but somehow I lost my radar on this band from San Jose, California.

Originally released in ’99, We Will Destroy…You Will Obey!! is a lesson in musical savagery that boils my blood and forces me to expel energy otherwise pent up and ignored. The Relapse reissue is a nice compliment for dinks like me that missed this gem the first time around and now beat themselves with barbed wire hangers because of being late to the party.

Produced masterfully by the incomparable James Murphy, We Will Destroy… has all of the best parts of a thrash/death assault usually absent in a venture of similar undertaking. What I like so much in this album is it doesn’t set out to change the world or even dent the psyche; it’s well-crafted volatility set to power chords and raspy vocalization that sets out to do little more than raise your blood pressure and incite feelings of reckless abandon. It does this and then some. Some very ancient forms of thrash metal are incorporated herein to the point of near-mimicry if not for the tremendous slap across the face to this ridiculous crop of ‘nu-thrash’ bands popping up and laying claim to such a sound some 25-years after the fact. I never thought I’d see thrash metal becoming a mall entity, but slowly and surely it is, and while I treat thrash metal today much in the same way I look at black metal as modern parody exceptions are to be made where applicable.

Early Kreator is certainly a reasonable comparison here, as is early Metallica, Exodus and a faster version of Tank, but Dekapitator relies on more than its wits and influence to garner such favor; the music being of sonic imperfection is what makes it so viable to my old and damaged ears. There is nothing new to be hashed in thrash metal as a whole, but unlike black metal that stagnates to the point of abject boredom thrash can be utilized to an at least differing level, albeit blueprinted and patterned. Tracks like “Attack with Mayhem,” “Hell’s Metal” or “Release the Dogs” remind me of the good ol’ days when metal had a lone purpose of creating a large swarm of bodies, sweaty and limber, that climbed over and banged into one another in the most illogical and primitive fashion ever seen by human eyes. While the ritualistic dance has also been watered down to the lowest common factor, the music still finds a captive audience when implemented by musicians that simply ‘get it’. Dekapitator gets it, balls it up, throws it into your chest at top speed, then laughs as you cower in pain and a poser’s embarrassment. That, my friends, is what speedy thrash metal is all about - the musical carnival that forces a cathartic reaction to all things basic and normal.

What the crux of this review hopefully gets you to do is revisit a period of musical abandonment that cared little for outside influence and even less for rules and guidelines. At its most naked, thrash metal finds an incredibly high peak within the chaotic assembly that is We Will Detroy…You Will Obey!! if, for nothing else, a chance look at true discord all too often left to interview blurbs or photo-ops by latecomers. When you want something done right, go to the masters - if the master is not at home, find a worthy subject to carry the name in his absence.

Dekapitator is the lord of the manor for today’s visit.

(Originally written for www.metalpsalter.com)