Iceland

Circa the mid 1990s, the consensus was the thrash metal was dead, and the consensus was dead wrong. A more fitting sentiment would have been that the finicky rock radio mainstream, which never really got beyond the Big 4 and a few slightly lesser selling figures out of New York and California, had it's fill of what it saw as a fleeting curiosity. The style had already gone through a number of metamorphoses that culminated in several new species of extreme metal, each having its own proverbial time in the sun, but the original version was preserved, albeit pretty far under the radar, mostly in small conclaves in Europe and, to some extent, Japan and South America. Arguably one of the least prolific places in western Europe for thrash metal was France, and yet at the trough of said styles popularity in 1994, an album was fielded by a band called Iceland that had been toiling around in the European underground since the late 80s.

The musical contents of their self-titled debut are surprisingly consistent stylistically, given that it functions as a compilation of songs written from the late 80s to the mid 90s, a time period where some sizable mutations happened in the thrash style. There is a sort of otherworldly character to the atmosphere of the album, as it plays pretty heavily into that 80s mode of heavily reverb laden production jobs where everything sounds as if coming from afar, not to mention a recurring usage of ambient keyboards that were probably influenced by the early 90s experimentation of various death metal albums such as Death's Human and Darkthrone's Soulside Journey. The death metal influences are naturally a bit subtle and don't warrant a death/thrash label, but there is definitely a sort of free flowing character to the structure of these songs that is a bit more in line with where death metal was circa 1992 than the sort of epic build up of early 90s thrash metal or the wild yet simplistic character of much of 80s thrash metal.

Naturally there is still a heavily conventional character to this album, mostly in terms of the sound and orientation of the vocals and the instrumental approach. When approaching much of the material that was put together in the early 90s such as "Merry Sinner" and "Magic C'R'Cl", the crunchy character of the guitars and the generally fast yet often groovy orientation lends itself fairly well to something out of Heathen or Defiance at the time, though shorter in length. On the other hand, the album's 7 minute epic "Traces Of Dreams" listens like it could have come off of Human, particularly when those eerie dual guitar harmonies and atmospheric keys chime in, though the vocal work of Philippe Roux maintains a traditional thrash gruff sound that is somewhat reminiscent of Vio-Lence's Sean Killian, save just a bit more gravely. "Pariah", which is one of the few songs on here to have been written during the 80s, definitely has more of a pure thrashing vibe, in much the same was as the earlier 80s material that would end up comprising The Legacy, with plenty of NWOBHM elements to the melodic contour of the song. The mid 90s material such as "Still Have To Pray" and "Final Mission" have a bit more of a stop/start groove element to them that is somewhat indicative of a death 'n roll sound mixed in, but the overall orientation of these songs still has high degree of consistency with the spacey thrash niche of the rest of the album.

In retrospect, the heavy lack of interest in this band and this album can be chalked up to a lot of things, but competency and inventiveness were definitely not among them. It presents a sort of road not traveled where certain aspects of the death metal aesthetic of the early 90s were brought into the thrash metal sound, whereas the guttural vocal character and muddier guitar tone was passed up in favor of maintaining the older mode of percussive, nimble neck dislocation. The technical prowess of these players is about as apparent as it would have been for a higher 2nd tier band out of the Bay Area circa 1987. It is a shame that this band didn't get too far, but it was definitely a rough swim against the time considering the year and the location. But there is a silver-lining in the fact that this album represents part of an unbroken chain of succession in thrash metal where the old guard handed the torch to a number of younger bands that go their start in the later 90s, though Witchburner was already in demo mode by the time this Iceland was put out. Not to mention that opening for the likes of Cradle Of Filth prior to going out is a pretty impressive accomplishment for a thrash band in the mid 90s. It may be hard to come by, but this is an album worth hearing if you can find it.