Void Terra Firma

The dreaded sophomore slump is something that became a bit more prevalent in the latter days of thrash metal, and was often accompanied by a sudden and drastic shift in style that corresponded with the trends of the day. There is naturally a handful of exceptions to the latter part of this phenomenon where a band will either experience a lineup shift of some significance or modify their execution so that what results is stylistically consistent yet lacking in quality. The stipulated "Johnny come lately" of the Bay Area scene Defiance experienced both of these issues when 1990 rolled in and it was time to put together a follow up to the respectable yet derivative Product Of Society, hence the birth of Void Terra Firma. To be fair, the introduction of a new lineup does not necessitate a loss of a band's edge, so it wouldn't be a stretch to simply state that Defiance came to the place that they ended up on here entirely on their own initiative, or lack thereof.

In a sense, this is actually an extremely well put together album that exemplifies a lot of the technical intricacies that were on full display in the early 90s as Heathen, Vio-Lence and Forbidden were beginning to tinker with some highly progressive ideas. There is a richness of fancy riff work, much of it going outside of simple off-beat chugging patterns into quirky melodic territory that was a bit more of a staple of Death's stylistic direction after Leprosy, not to mention a healthy amount of acoustic input, such as the gloomy intros to "Questions" and "Checkmate", which are a tad bit of a gimmick given their briefness, but feed in to the rapidly changing character of each song on here in an appropriate fashion. Though it comes with the usual mixture of anger and protest that is typical of a politically tinged thrash album, it also has this fatalistic and haunting character to it that reflects the wasteland visual on the album cover, which is again something that was a bit closer to the direction of early 90s death metal and a number of transitional death/thrash acts of the same time.

Despite all of the truly solid ideas at play here, there is a nagging set of flaws in the delivery that drags thing down pretty significantly. Chief among these is the vocal performance of Steev Esquivel, which amounts to a sloppy mixture of Hetfield gruff and a pretty bad rendition of what are either Chuck Billy or Tom Araya shrieks. This could be chalked up to him not fully gelling with the rest of the band yet as he did a better job on the album following this one, and it may also be partially due to his voice being somewhat over-exposed, which gets into the other flaw this album suffers under, namely a disunity in the final mixing job. This is a little bit less apparent on the 2008 remaster, but it's still a nagging problem and one that is not shared by the demo versions of these songs included on said version. The whole album lacks the necessary crunch and heaviness to fully unlock the potential of these songs, and makes the whole thing sound like it was recorded back in 1984, despite being stylistically appropriate for its time.

This album doesn't deserve to be totally panned as there are a lot of really good songs to be heard, but it could have been so much better had it received the type of production job that Twisted Into Form had, which was clearly the direction in which Defiance was attempting to go. Between the intricate lead guitar work, the various sectional twists and turns of each song, and the overall aura of hopelessness and bleakness that this thing puts off, it could have been this band's crowning achievement. This is worth a listen or two, but it is likely that just about anyone with even a mild familiarity with the latter days of Bay Area thrash will come away with an impression that this album's post-production and vocal takes were rushed, resulting in a type of chaos that detracts from its overall effectiveness. As a whole, a missed opportunity by a band that was struggling to break out of the shadow of 2nd tier status.