The Second Coming

“…scream out with sorrow, there’s no tomorrow…”

Not only does The Second Coming (clichés hanging all over that title, luckily with no acknowledgement by the music) reinvent the five-piece after their three-year hiatus, it also pushes their known B-level status to the limit, meaning that if Battle at Helm’s Deep clings to the edge of decency, then this oeuvre is valiantly leaning down to grab its older brother before it falls into the crevice of the dreaded, flaming third tier.

While Attacker’s debut fended off the harsh embrace of nearby thrash with tried and true weapons of ancestral traditionalism, the work on their follow-up has forged a treaty with a nastier sonic premise that’s rather cutting edge even for ‘88’s metallically-full stomach. Confidence radiates from this album, self-assured in its more speed-zoned, restructured spirit that arose sometime after BAHD, a force enunciating a prosperous power metal language while boiling still a few steps away from thrash’s jagged border. Now the band has always exhibited strength in songwriting, but this is wet with renewal that shines far beyond the tightening of a few screws and a Wacko Hunter production upgrade.

Above all, the change in guard is pretty severe as gone are guitarist Jim Mooney and vocalist Bob Mitchell. While Tom D’Amico can try to claim partial responsibility for the music’s exciting expeditious growth (I’ll explain the ‘try’ part in a minute), on another level the latter’s absence is more glaring to the ears when lined back to back with the comparably sharper pipes of John Leone. Ex of Jack Starr’s Phantom Lord endeavor, his shearing breath brings a sense of completion to the project and a dynamism that strikes the nerve center of “Captives of Babylon”, bi-polar “Revelations of Evil”, and frothy “Emanon”; cleaner though less unhallowed than Damien Thorne’s Justin Fate and Bloodlust (US)-era Steve Gaines and is analogous to the likes of Powersurge’s James Marra and a slightly more powerful Andre Matos of Viper. Like most of the men above, he remains imprisoned by obscurity despite conspicuous talent.

Huff n’ puffer “Lords of Thunder”, lyricless and brief “Octagon”, and under the wire speedsters “Zero Hour” and “The Madness” exemplify how the rhythmic foundation has not only changed, but progressed as a whole. Cohesion and tightness are lifted to a band-wide high, rippling impressively in the fluent “Desecration”, which would prove to be the lp’s most hi-tech whirl. The pure metal instincts carrying the debut have been elaborated on, fleshed out like a storybook character so that by the end of side one there’s little doubt that some high-caliber players live here.

Pretty obvious to mention really is that little Mercenary Records couldn’t push this release financially, promotionally, or any other “ly” you can think of beside miserably, using hardly-known Celluloid/Pipeline distribution and marketing for a chore that needed abler hands. Fortunately, this has been made available by strong throwback label Sentinel Steel, adding the band’s ’86 demo (with Leone the only change from the debut), which incidentally, other than a few altered nooks and crannies, is very similar to what emerges on this album and shows Attacker were adapting their sound to the future guard even before D’Amico stepped into the picture.

Very strong, very underrated, and very unspoken, The Second Coming would be the last for the band from the ‘80s and ‘90s. It’s not hard to taste their frustration as distribution lays an egg, though as these obviously talented members moved on to other projects, it’s flabbergasting to me that most of this rhythm section went on to form the creatively boneheaded Jersey Dogs.