Is It a Human?

This was a side-project for the Accuser guys, the bass player Uwe Schmidt and the drummer Olli Fechner, that was run parallel to the father band for a few years, and based on the demo here it may have even threatened to overshadow the Accuser saga which was showing signs of fatigue and a lack of inspiration around that time.

Cause this is some really cool old school thrash that we have on this 6-tracker that stretches to over half an hour and comes with a crystal-clear sound quality. I remember this effort being listed as a full-length here earlier… Anyway, into the pit with “Megalomania”, a ripping semi-technical headbanger that could stand on “Who Dominates Who?”, for example, the vocals also modelled after the ones of Frank Thoms, maybe a bit more shouty and nasal. “Desert Storm” retains the no-bars-held course with fast lashing guitars the band breaking the mould with more regular stomping applications and more intricate fretwork bordering on the openly technical. The title-track indulges in a short acoustic intro before the speedy fireworks put everyone on his/her toes, this one an exemplary technical/progressive riff-fest with twists and turns galore, and with great melodic lead pyrotechnics. “Depression” comes with shades of mid-period Sepultura, but the execution is again on the more intricate side with a frenetic change of pace exercised all the way to the balladic etude of “Masquerade”, a heavy mid-paced proposition with doomy/semi-balladic overtones, a decent respite rudely cancelled by “Delusion”, a hard thrashing shredfest which goes through several tempos, the speedier one a dominant motif regardless of the regularly applied slower breaks.

This effort beats Accuser’s last two as it avoids the overlong composition-trap into which those fell heads-over-heels, the guys wisely keeping it more compact and more precise, also bringing back the more complex riff-patterns from the band’s earlier recordings. As a result we have a nice short showing that, more or less intentionally, became a competition to the musicians’ main band at the time, also coming with more flexible and more melodic, not as rigid and stiffly mechanized, guitar work the latter occupying quite a bit of space on Accuser’s 90’s output.

Well, the rivalry didn’t last very long as the guys realized their “mistake” soon after, and jumped into the groove with the self-titled EP. The full-length was an elaboration on the groovy post-thrashy infatuations, quite reminiscent of Accuser’s “Taken by the Throat” released the same year. So much for dreams of old school domination during those gruesome times… the last bits of humanity had fallen under the yoke.