Chopping Block Blues

Blood Feast took the metal world by the storm with their blazing 1987 debut, "Kill for Pleasure", an aggressive piece of death/thrash in the vein of Slayer/Exodus with a raw edge that quickly became a bestseller for the amateurish New Renaissance records.

Years passed and Blood Feast had to deal with line-up problems, losing their guitarist and key member Adam Tranquili. Then their label went bankrupt before releasing the already- planned second album, "The Last Remains", delaying the follow-up to their promising debut and probably watering down all their hunger for blood.

I remember back in 1990 reading a "Chopping Block Blues" review in a magazine along with Obituary's "Cause of Death", realizing death metal had become way more popular than thrash at that point. I also noticed how Obituary's and Blood Feast's careers were going in radically different directions (for some reason, I always thought the frenzy playing, fuzzy guitar tone, and overall atmosphere on "Slowly We Rot" had something in common with "Kill for Pleasure").

Most thrash bands were softening their music, some playing half-thrash ala "Black Album", but for an underground band it was never a good choice, in my opinion. Blood Feast should have added more death metal to their music to stay relevant, maybe tuning down guitars or singing with a lower register. With a few adjustments, they could have sounded like Obituary with Gary Markovitch having the potential to challenge John Tardy. Surely, it's too easy to say this now.

Anyway, the band chose to go in the "wrong" direction, going "techno-thrash" when that scene was already dying and saturated, and to be honest, they hadn't any chance to be successful, being average players at best. With a better production and more complex song structures, in fact, all Blood Feast sloppiness became crystal clear on "Chopping Block Blues".

The lack of good riffs hidden by furious playing on their past releases increased dramatically along with Mike Basden's laughable attempts at "melodic" leads all over the place and finally the changed vocal approach by Gary Markovitch, now sounding like a weaker Tom Araya being the last nail in the coffin.

I can't believe this album has an higher score than "Kill for Pleasure" on Metal Archives. It's just the feeble death yell of another promising thrash band screwed by the record label and slowly killed by the decline of the scene.