Fall of Life

Could there possibly be anyone out there who remembers these guys, besides me? I remember reading about them in Aardschok magazine in the 90's, where they were the next hot item for about 5 minutes before fading into obscurity faster than it takes to jerk off. Even back then their biggest claim to fame was the fact that the line up featured (then) former God Dethroned member Henri Sattler, together with people who used to be part of some act called BYOB I've never heard of, and judging from that name, I'm not missing much, I guess. And talking about not missing much, this also accurately describes this album.

Contained within this silver disc is a mixture of thrash metal with hardcore influences, with touches of death metal added. In practice, this results in a very 90's sounding mixture of Pro Pain, Hate Squad and Merauder on one side, with some Slayer type parts on the other. Unfortunately, the parts that bring Slayer to mind, remind me most of the songs Slayer never plays live. To this (back then) very contemporary clash of styles, one can also add the influence of what Obituary did on their "World Demise" album, but less enjoyable. On top of the music comes the very, VERY limited vocal contribution of Hans Mertens, a man who sounds like he is taking a difficult dump in a very angry way. This very tedious vocal performance is somewhat held up by the (for the most part) decent guitar playing. The riffing has, as pointed out before, a pretty big Slayer influence, but here and there I hear some nods to Iron Maiden as well as Bolt Thrower too, which helps to improve my general impression of this album somewhat. Still, I've heard plenty of bands that operate in the same field who did this better. The music has its moments, especially when they turn up the tempo, but as a whole it sounds pretty directionless. It's not groovy enough to go along with what Sepultura or Prong were doing at the time, yet it's not aggressive or, well, interesting enough to fall in with other (better) death/thrash metal like what Exhorder, Massacra or Demolition Hammer did on their first albums.

A big part of what turns me off is the production, courtesy of Franky's Recording Kitchen, a studio very solid in giving everyone that records there the exact same sound. Take other productions from the same studio, like Altar "Youth against Christ" or Inquisitor's "Walpurgis...", and then listen to Ministry of Terror and their debut, they all sound shockingly similar (with the difference that Altar and Inquisitor are actually way better bands, of course.). For a very big part, this is to blame on the totally triggered to shit percussion, which effectively ruins an above par performance by drummer Tjerk, with the guitars sounding practically the same as on the other releases from the same studio mentioned above. This production is the aural equivalent of a newspaper left out in the rain: soggy, not of much use and dated as hell nowadays.

There are some good things on here, like the good performance by both guitarists and drummer, but in its totality the music gets bogged down by the so-and-so compositions, the poor vocals and crap production. This is a very unimaginative album as a result, and the world isn't missing much with this being stuck in relative obscurity. Harsh words perhaps, but that is just the way I feel it.

The Netherlands have given us way better death/thrash metal bands in the past, like Dead Head, the aforementioned Inquisitor and Radiathor, so it is perhaps a better use of your time to check those out, and to let Ministry of Terror fade from memory, into peaceful and forgiving obscurity.