Destiny

This album was meant to be released in the early-90’s as an almost immediate follow-up to the band’s debut, but such a scenario never came to pass. Whether the guys decided to shelve it with consideration of the oncoming groovy/post-thrashy/industrial trends, of which they became an indelible part in the mid-90’s, or they simply couldn’t find interested labels to back them up at the time, is unclear; what’s clear is that this opus here may as well be the finest product the band have put their signatures under.

Largely based on the material from their debut demo, with two new tracks added, this effort shows them fairly accomplished musicians from the very beginning with a compelling, quite frenetic and complex approach to the good old thrash, one that their first official release also tried to elaborate on, but didn’t go all the way. The latter sounds a bit timid compared to the audacious musicianship on display here, the guys crossing the first two Forbidden sagas on “Persecuting Myself” where direct lashing riffs intersect with smattering intricate configurations in the best tradition of “Twisted into Form”, a bewitching riff-fest with focus on the speed the latter reaching the top on the maddening technicaller “Another Illusion” which will bring sweet memories of Midas Touch’s “Presage of Disaster” and Toxik’s “World Circus”, with the vocalist holding his own ground with an assured forceful clean/semi-clean timbre.

Mentioning the Toxiks, they seem to be the major reference point later as the delivery zigzags between their debut and “Think This”, and please note that the Americans’ sophomore hadn’t even been released at the time most of these numbers were written. In other words, expect frenetic speedy shredders (“Corrupt”, “The Twilight Zone”) to cross swords with multi-layered progressive sagas (the excellent semi-balladic “In the Face of the Law”, the superb hectic riff-fest “Another Illusion”) as the intensity on the latter is pretty big, too, culminating on the exquisite “Touch of Violence” where both sides come entwined in a feverish spiral-like bond with surreal twisted time-signatures keeping the listener on his/her toes the entire time. The more linear, lese exuberant “The Road to Nowhere” doesn’t sound awkward; on the contrary, it nicely fits into the hyper-active, contrived carnival which simply can’t stand still, from both a technical and speed point-of-view, save for a short balladic instrumental (“Visions of Life”) pacifying the proceedings at the end.

There’s this suppressed desire for more outlandish, more bizarre ways of expression akin to their compatriots Acrimony, Astharoth, and Wolf Spider, but the frames already outlined by the guys’ American brethren hold steadfastly against those urges for most of the time. Leaks of surreality still manage to come to the surface here and there, but overall the delivery is disciplined and structured regardless of its hyper-active at times character. The band cover a fairly wide ground with this outing thrashing like demented, puzzling like mathematicians, shredding like virtuosos… a seemingly bottomless pool of ideas and skills they had at their disposal that sadly went wasted with the band’s subsequent conversion into the next aggro/groovy kids on the 90’s block...

a status they’re willing to retain in the new millennium obviously, the belated release of the album here notwithstanding. Whatever rocks their boat, after all; it’s not always possible to consciously tap into that pool of astounding talent. Well, our friends here would probably find the way to do that again… if this is their destiny.