Exhumált világ

Angel Reaper's final demo also displayed one final step in the band's evolution. The hokey melodies have been tamed, even transformed into an interesting exotic lead or two that fit the music, the dark atmosphere they always grasped at is in their holds now that the edge of thrash is no longer their target, and the vocals have been handed over to another band member who seems to fit them in more than have them stand out. Though it wraps up their somewhat lackluster and brief career with some satisfaction, this isn't their strongest effort - perhaps the most listenable without cutting the treble, but a bit dimmed by the loss of their reckless abandon.

The grating, vicious edge of their earlier works has been smoothed out and the band has a meatier tone, still lo-fi, and the vocals have had enough reverb added to make their Hungarian countrymen Tormentor blush. The production, though lacking low-end as they're still a thrash band with black/thrash vocals and a bit of a black end, is otherwise fairly similar to the muddy sound of many death metal demos of the early 90s, a welcome change from the high-end treble balance of their older demos that were harsher on my ears than Moonblood. It is certainly a welcome change and an interesting conclusion to their career, seeing how they focused and refined their earlier efforts. The overall notability factor is pretty low though - it's a thrash demo from 1992 that's not particularly impressive nor embracing the extremity that their intents seem to require to be realized. Drenching the vocals in reverb is a nice touch, a sign of the times in that they're taking some of the edge off of thrash for the atmosphere as they hadn't done in the past, but it's also quite behind the times for primitive yet extreme thrash - Tormentor were five years ahead of them on the vocals, and more intense, while Bathory seemed far ahead of this band as a whole, with both of those bands being much better. Perhaps the reason music like this is enjoyable is because it offers some potential that it could sound really good had their ambitions led them to the right places - something those bands are exemplary of.

Though they appear out of order on the "Angel Ripping Metal" compilation, it is an interesting journey to listen through Angel Reaper's demos - a journey through a few years for an extreme band that was neither an innovator nor particularly impressive, but offers us some insights into what metal was beyond those who became the most famous. While we know the history of metal by the top tier classics, even the second and third tier classics, and the steps in between for the bands who put those out, listening to the bands who never made it to that level provides a great perspective in what the differences between good, great, and decent bands are. This is a band that, had things gone a little differently, had they come a little earlier, might have managed to make a solid thrash album, or even a black metal album, rather than being swept into the dustbin at the downfall of thrash in the early 90s. Their mistakes are as interesting as their successes, and this is largely because the music oozes honesty - despite the goofy, happy melodies, they were intent on making evil sounding thrash metal. They pushed their music as far as they could, but their limitations kept them short of being more than a collection of artifacts that wouldn't regularly be on display at a museum, rather dug out for interested historians studying a broad range of things that includes the insignificant.