Brain Killer

Ladies and gents, here comes the Messiahlator, an Edmonton vintage metal bulldozer. Equal parts trash and crust, it is coated in a dirty, savage and aggressive polish of the late 80’s – a polish that prevents this metal from rusting.

Brain Killer is Messiahlator’s new cassette. Yes, cassette. Like me, you may own hundreds of cassettes, but haven’t listened to them in years. Well, today I thought about getting my tape desk out of the closet, for Brain Killer is a powerful argument that some music is made to be released on certain formats.

The Edmonton trio plays a raw form of trash metal. It is fast, it has no finesse, no melodies, no breakdowns, very little colors, very few guitar solos, just a straightforward punch in the face. It almost sounds like a live attack, drenched in sweat and beer. The production is very thin, and the instruments are likely recorded on top of each other, with the screams cutting through here and there. All five songs are a short format, and have unpretentious random theme titles varying from “Righteous Man” to “Ride the Plague” or “Canada Dry”. Ten minutes of noisy steamrolling.

Brain Killer is this kind of demo that may not make the year’s end lists, but will be played in loop for a short while with great satisfaction. In my case, it came in a timely manner as I was craving some dirty trash recently, in the vein of Riotor, Nuclear Assault, Sodom, etc – very tasteful.

Now that I listened to this demo and enjoyed its texture, I wonder what it will lead to: “normally”, demos are the groundwork for an album. What would these songs sound like if they’d get recorded for a full length? Would they get a ‘cleaner’ treatment or would they keep their crusty coating? This is always an interesting dilemma for a band, and I’ll be looking forward to any follow up to Brain Killer.

If ten minutes are not enough for you, and like what you hear, Brain Killer follows another mini-cassette (demo) released in 2012, and a full length vinyl in 2010. Like the other cassette, Brain Killer is available for free download on Messiahlator’s bandcamp’s page.

- TheBlackHull
[Originally written for blog.metalmadeincanada.ca]