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Slaughter > Strappado > Reviews > DevourerOfSouls
Slaughter - Strappado

"One thousand miles per hour" - That's Strappado - 100%

DevourerOfSouls, May 27th, 2006

Warning: this review is written while listening the ORIGINAL vinyl, not the reissue. So the tracklisting is: Strappado / The Curse / Disintegrator / Incinerator / Parasites / F.O.D. / Tortured Souls / Nocturnal Hell / Tales of Macabre. Enjoy

First song, "Strappado" starts with a guitar "riff" screaming like thousand pigs in a tornado make of barbed wire. Guitar screams low and then high, and the drums kick in. I'm not sure is it Dave Hewson or Terry Sadler singing now, but it is really working. There no real hooks in song, just mayhem. If you read the lyrics while listening, the only thing you can hear there is the "Strappado!"-scream!

Second one, "The Curse" is a heavy song. If it was Sadler singing on the first one, it's definetily Hewson on this one. Vocals sound more low pitched and dark. Like Hellhammer! Guitar sounds like crocodiles wrapped in burning barbed wire!

Next one(s), "Disintegrator/Incinerator" are like two in one, but I always like to think them as two different song. "Disintergrator" doesen't have a chorus really, just insane blasting. "Incinerator" starts with vocalist screaming "Make way for the incinerator". First, the vocals sound quite calm, but then the chorus. The is so sick! Best chorus ever! Backing vocalist is screaming just "Incinerator" and Hewson chants some fucking apocalyptic curses! This isn't really a fast song, but definetily the best one on the A-side. There's also a solo, sounds like almost every 80's death/thrash bands, but it fits in the song. Try reading the lyrics while listening, feels like the world is gonna end! "Didin't learn from the past..."

Last song on the A-side, "Parasites", starts with a hellish riff, cast from Hewson's guitar. The sound is just unbelieveable, so cruel. I heard some picturing it like this: "Rotten chainsaws floated in boiling oil", and that's just perfect. The chorus of this song looks like catchy on the lyrics sheet, but when heard, it's just "parasitesblaablaaparasites". A fucking mayhem!

"Fuck of Death", what a song. Starts with a heaviest riff ever made, expecially when the album is made in 1986. Hewson has this echo in his voice, it sounds like he's standing on a pile on dead bodies. I can almost smell the stench of death! Also Ron Sumners' drumwork is heavy as shit! Every time he hits his bassdrum, my spine just gets more twisted. I can't say that this is the worst song on the album, it's just the least perfect.

"Tortured souls". Yeah. This song really makes me feel like having a strappado (a mediaval torture technic). Chorus makes me feel like in hell. Two guys are shouting "We are the tortured souls".

This is the second last one, "Nocturnal Hell". The title is awesome, pictures the song perfectly. Twisted riff, heavy drumming and the vocals sounds like screaming from the bottom of a grave. Praise Satan for inventing echo! This is very "hellhammerish" song but Hellhammer could have never done it this fast!

Wow, now, this is the last one and truly the best one: "Tales of Macabre". I think this sounds even more like Hellhammer than "Nocturnal Hell". Like HH's "Aggressor", this one starts with a drum intro. Heavy as hell! Then Sadler starts to play something awful with his bass. Sounds like he's trying to learn the song while playing in. Then, he starts to play the riff. Then, the guitar hits in and the riff is a one twisted fuck! This is soooo apocalyptic. After repeating few different riffs for a while, Hewson starts chanting. "Listen to my tale of mayhem that my mouth does spew". It sounds so mean, so dark, so evil. Then he's screaming like inside of an iron maiden. The chorus is a killer one, "Tales of macabre-cabre-bre.....". The lyrics are perfect, lines like "Few are willing to do my killing" or "Hades assassin - a killer supreme". This album is killing me!

That's where Strappado end. This is an album that I truly recommend for the fans of Hellhammer, early Death and Mantas and Autopsy. Too heavy and not-so-fast to be mixed with the brazilian ones. If I just could, I'd give a 666 points for this one. This is what perfect album sounds.