Terminal

Hellcannon sure caused significant stir in 2010, almost out of nowhere dropping their riotous blackened thrash debut Infected with Violence, after which, however, they kinda lost momentum. Four years passed before the new full-length Terminal saw the light of day, and I'm not even sure it could be labeled as that, given that it has just 5 new songs, the remaining ones being no more than their first demo Raiders of the Waste copy-pasted with no substantial differences. And why is there a supposed intro track at #4? The album's page may seem vandalized at first glance, but apparently it is just like that. Talk about not having the best first impression ever...

Luckily, the band hadn't forgotten how to play in the meantime, yet it seems they wanted to show they weren't that simplistic band anymore. Simultaneously, founding member Ryan Fiorita began to distance his vocals from the harsh, Joel Grind-like screams of Infected with Violence, adopting a throatier style, with some growls on 'Lost Cause' accentuating his not-quite-death-but-almost inflection. The opening couple of 'Through the Eyes of Evil' and aforementioned 'Lost Cause' bring the best of both worlds, and half-closer 'The Wasteland Remains' follows suit for a while before losing its path halfway through. The title-track, conversely, is a mid-tempo affair which prefigures the band's least convincing material on 2017's Return to the Wasteland. The 'infamous' 'Arrival (Intro)' is a decent instrumental anyway, despite Hellcannon not exactly being virtuosos of their craft. All of this, however, is far from being unmissable stuff.

The demo material is, well, the same as the demo, although I've been partly deceitful before as some studio polishing seems to have been done. 'Speed Killer' is still my favourite, even if Fiorita's voice appears to have been on a bad day in it, and the loose cannon 'Satanic Smoke' is a welcome surprise as it didn't manage to snatch a place on Infected with Violence. 'Sacrifice by Fire' and 'Raiders of the Waste' are no slouches either, and you probably already know it if you're familiar with said LP. That's the kind of stuff Hellcannon always nailed, gotta give 'em that.

In the end, Terminal is a puzzling release. I don't know how the band advertised it to fans, back then, but I wouldn't think of it as something worth buying with, you know, actual money. In any case, 'Through the Eyes of Evil' is a nice addition to their catalogue, if nothing else, and the demo material embraces some of their best songs, so it's worth a casual listen.

-review written for the 8th Diamhea Memorial Review Challenge – may you rest in peace, Chris.