My Friend Lonely

From the znow… sorry, snow white hills of Chicago we had an avalanche earlier in the 80’s, an Act of God no more no less, which was a lot of fun to be buried under… a truly awesome classic speed/thrash avalanche that didn’t last long, unfortunately, largely cause the diva and former Sentinel Beast Debbie Gunn decided to quit this camp in order to prick the thick ice layer with Ice Age, and to also add some potent brutality to the oncoming groovy wave with Brutal Groove in the early-90’s.

The others carried on, though, finding shelter in this temple here, against the pulverizing numetal cyclone, and resisted to it admirably with the first instalment “I Hate Therefore I Am”, a nice tribute to the Bay-Area. Three years later the shelter/temple was partly overtaken by the invading aggro/grooves, the several pricks in the walls first evident on the “Building Errors in the Machine” EP.

Most of the tracks from the EP are featured on the album reviewed here, and they’re the ones that bring some life into this recording, like the vivid leftover from the debut “Hate Makes Hate”, the stomping pulverizing “Down the Drain”, the sprightly semi-technical headbanger “Killing Floor”… the main question regarding those is why they’ve been included here, being familiar and all. The new singer Sonny de Luca, who replaced the departed Zhowhite remnant Brian Troch, is a forceful angry shouter, not hiding his fascination with both Phil Anselmo (Pantera) and Rob Flynn (Machine head), and even if he was supervising a wholesome nod at the classic thrash heritage all the way, there’d still be quite a few listeners who would be semi-whispering “modern metal” due to his openly confrontational performance, although in his defence one has to admit that he does pull out a more pronounced emotional croon on the more laid-back moments. And the modern metal tunes do come, the new material that is, the title-track a clumsy semi-balladic groover; “Comfortably Superficial” an uncomfortably loyal numetal dirge; and “Time Heals All” a confused/confusing soulful groove/blues hybrid.

On the plus side, these three numbers don't stick as prominently, submerged in the loftier rest, also thanks to de Lucca’s vociferous presence, but at the same time the purpose of their presence is beyond clear: the band have voted to give their (un)fair share to the bustling numetal movement, besieging those intentions with echoes of their classic past, trying to bind the two currents. Not very convincingly, though, as the boosted modern production is another nod in favour of the trendy musicalities, the guys surely on the road to phasing out their old school predilections, most likely smacking a full-on tribute to father groove on their next instalment. Again, it might have sounded a tad superior than the efforts of the hordes of aggro-practitioners swarming the scene at the time, but based on the material offered here one would definitely do better than betting blindly on this team.

All bets scrapped very shortly after this opus’ release, the band folding amicably, obviously disillusioned with the less demanding musical canvas, one that simply couldn’t accommodate their more proficient vistas. Full-time servants to the numetal fad they didn’t become, departing from this temple, not fearing any impending cyclones anymore… some people say they’ve seen some of them climbing the snow white mountains again, their initial much safer and more productive haven. Only God knows when they’ll decide to act again with all the gunn… sorry, guns blazing.