Blasted in Bangkok

"...now you look into the eyes of the other man's face.."

Some think that Hirax simply disintegrated during the aftermath of Hate, Fear & Power to become another short saga of an '80s band likely rife with dejection and finalized by tragedy. True or untrue, to be or not to be, yet in the end nailing shut the coffin on Hirax’s full-length album life course in the ‘80s. Squeaking out from the last air passage is ‘87’s three-song Blasted in Bangkok demo and a hard-to-find same-named 7” on unknown Lautrec Records that carves off a song but fattens up with a new-found title cut. A 2001 reissue via Deep Six (that I have in front of me) drops the title cut but adds three more. A little ass-backward and confusing, but who cares?

By the final tracks on Hate, Fear & Power, the four-piece seemed to be jogging a more rhythmic and progressively slanted slope, still sideways thrash but with more of a head on its shoulders that was maybe eyeing up the more technical march of the style that was still kinda small on the horizon line. Writing on the wall? Yeah, sprayed in a cool speeding flame motif by a fiend late for a show in Purgatory.

Tracks as annihilative as anything on Raging Violence erupt, heaving a fully vitalized passion not unlike sophomore lp ragers “Unholy Sacrifice” and “Hate, Fear & Power”, yet are more stylized toward their own attack plan, an identity that finally blooms into their own elemental energy of fire fanned by experience and struggle. “Fear the War Within”, “Beginning of the End” and “Dying World (Shock)” are confidence-ignited and deprived of nothing, harnessing their All – tempests full-blown and razor thick, unpolished melodic decency, drunkenly thrashaholic and pulverizingly-tempered – for perhaps a triumvirate of their most solid sordid metal.

The membership unfolds and refolds a bit here, Katon’s sing-up-hiiiiggghhh, then-go-down-loooowww penchant now sharp and auctioneering (yet still an acquired taste), while Monardo, Owen, and original stickman Johnny Tabares swallow some jet fuel and roar through with guns blazing. The band’s never been so tight, so convincing, so convinced of itself, and it’s clear (to me) as if shown on a drive-in movie screen. The last treat is a version of “Bombs of Death” harking back to their ’84 demo and Metal Massacre spotlight, slightly less cooked than its Raging Violence clone, but in its raw form still pleasantly spirited and deadly.

Produced crisply yet with the mass of fuel oil, Hirax finally breathe the weather of A-list thrash. Something great was on the rise here, something with a fanged, conscious smile that knew it only had to let the music and a full-lengther do the snarling. Too bad that something pulled a Rip van Winkle and awoke choking on thrash’s ashes.