Demo '89

If you like hyper, screaming metal thrash, then after hearing the first three tracks of this, you’ll probably think that this tape absolutely fucking destroys. This came out towards the end of the Bay Area thrash metal boom, right before grindcore, death metal, and the whole Scandinavian church burning face-paint thing stole all the metal thunder, but yet still sounded fresh at the time- and does so even today.

Stylistically, this fits somewhere between Slayer at their angriest and fastest, and some of the earlier grindcore bands. The band was slightly more aggressive musically than, for example, Testament, Death Angel, or Exodus was. The songs are frighteningly fast, yet the drumming never resorts to the repetitive “typewriter” beats of modern extreme metal. The riffs are angry and powerful, shredding away at light speed but with enough power and catchiness in them to work well, most of the time. And thankfully, no down tuning here either. The solos are mostly atonal squalls, divebombs, and fast licks that are stylistically similar those of the famed Slay-tanic duo (King/Hanneman): simple but effective. And they are backed up by a heavy, grinding bass line and good powerful drumming. Vocals alternate between hoarse growls and throat shredding yells, actually for this style of music, the vocals are surprisingly effective. What really helps bring this up is the sound quality. For a DIY release, they really seem to have gotten it right: The bass is heavy and powerful, the guitars loud and up-front, and the drums and vocals well mixed. Sure its raw, but its still very loud and the anger and heaviness come across perfectly. Overall, it is a very powerful thrash-core sounding tape.

The first three songs blaze by nicely, with opener “AMX” immediately grabbing the listener with its go-for broke velocity and dueling lead work overtop some intense thrashing rhythms. “Live Your Death” is a short, fast hardcore track, while “In Fear We Kill” has a nice, fast head-banging rhythm with a good lead break (on the bass) in the middle of the song.

But things kinda lose steam after that, which forces me to deduct a few points from the total score here. Tracks 4 and 6 are rather pointless, erm, “adult themed” grindcore silliness, although the fourth track, “Thigh Rubbage” was actually a live favorite for some reason. While “Three Witches” is a good well constructed song with a slow buildup leading to some heavy thrashing bridge sections, the last three tracks are somewhat of a letdown as they are just not as memorable as the first three. Not that they’re bad though. They just all kind of run together, and seem to be sort of a trilogy about John F. Kennedy assassin Jack Ruby.

But with four classics out of nine tracks, fans of the more hardcore side of 80’s thrash metal can’t go wrong here. Note that there is also a vinyl/CD version of this tape entitled “The Truth of What Will Be” that was independently released about year or so afterwards; but it is the same recording as on this tape. Because “technology marches on” and we are well into the CD age, I would actually recommend tracking down the CD version.