Fear of Destiny

A lot of karma rose at the dawn of the 90’s, most of it not very benevolent, sadly. However, our gauchos here didn’t exactly play by the new groovy/post-thrash textbooks, also determined to steer their ship away from the staple power/speed/thrash hybrid as exercised over there by the veterans Lethal, Horcas and Hermetica.

The delivery on the album reviewed here is not exactly a downright return to the retro canons as the guys epitomize a dry sterile guitar sound for their mix of thrash, death and hardcore. Said mixture lacks energy, though, the band settling for a steady but not very eventful mid-paced stomp which often accommodates all the three genres into one composition. The thing is that, as is often the case on such amalgams, this three-pronged therapy doesn’t produce too many exciting results with not much discipline exhibited in the construction of the songs, the feeling that something technical is going on verging on the imaginative for most of the time.

Towards the end the guys surprisingly pull themselves together and come up with the excellent “Odio Song”, a complex meandering rendition of the modern thrash canons with clever heavy doomy insertions, the chaos witnessed on the rest reduced considerably for the production of the undisputable highlight here, a sure candidate for Meshuggah’s “Destroy Erase Improve”. No such occurrences later, but one would find little wrong in either “Nuclear Epidemy” or “Is Death My Solution?” which rudely break the mid-tempo quasi-groovy hegemony with portions of fiery blitzkrieg rhythms.

Yes, the approach betrays at times the time of release the final result recalling Sepultura’s “Chaos AD” and the Danes Grope’s earlier output, the more stylish moments just hints at loftier musical expressions which only fully materialize on the mentioned “Odio Song”. There isn’t much aggression generated from such a blend, either; the band pound their way patiently and even lethargically, seldom steam-rolling with passion the fearsome overshouty hardcore vocals enervating the setting, trying to compensate for the relative lack of dynamics the latter also ensured by the few spasmodic deathy proto-blasts scattered about.

The “Elevation Massacre” EP was a tighter affair the band phasing out the death and the hardcore, settling for a potent blend of retro thrash and post-thrash the final result not far from Exhorder’s own “The Law”. Consequently, it sounded more convincing that the effort here, also better co-ordinated with the 90’s laws, but the guys lost interest in the groovy/aggro carnival soon after, and went their separate ways. They’re freshly back on the field, by the way, with a new opus (“Persona non Grata”), but what aspect of their musical persona they have chosen to reveal this time I don’t know as I haven’t been able to get a hold of it. And it doesn’t really matter, if you think of it; there’s never been too much bad karma to burn with these lads anyway.