Kill or Be Killed

And you'd think I'd enjoy this too...given that it's classic-sounding speed metal...raw and dirty, not overproduced - but still, this is so goddamn mediocre that it's basically unlistenable after three or four songs. One or two, really.

After the uninspiring, if competent "Melt Down", which sounds like they tried to make the most insanely-mega-thrashing song ever, with at least three or four thrash breaks (unfortunately, none of them all that spine-snapping), we settle into mediocrity that starts off amusing but quickly turns unbearable. The next song repeats "Pig bastard! Pig bastard" over and over again, and then it just goes steadily downhill.

We go through cliche after cliche of silly heavy metal, from the (poorly executed) Sabbath-wannabe breakdown in Omen of Faith, to the ripoff Exciter riffs to the shrieky ripoff Exciter vocals... gawd, when they pick things up again in that song after that awful middle melodic portion, it sounds EXACTLY like "Violence and Force", down to the generic "we're riding the coattails of Venom so hard" riff to the meedly-meedly goes-nowhere soloing...

And it only gets worse. The album reaches its complete nadir at "Knights of Old Bridge", which attempts to channel Manowar, of all things, foreshadowing that band's descent into parody... "as I look towards the sky, and think of days gone past, the kings, they enter my mind, born leaders of the quest". Oh my fucking godchristing anti-gerbil sodomisation... THE HORROR, THE HORROR.

"Blessed Death" is a reprise of this complete filth, with the fast parts lacking creativity... they throw in that Violence and Force riff again (gawd, they really must've liked that song!)... and the slow parts being just so completely lacking in groove that they are a grating abomination. The songwriting is awful. They must've thought they were so fucking over-the-top, but they were just terrible. Technical, this is not.

Seriously beyond the first track, and "Napalm" (which does a good job of pretending to be "Megalomania" in parts), there is nothing worth hearing here.

Kids, this is what gives heavy metal a bad name. Avoid.