Razor White

This is a cool raw sounding heavy metal demo that does contain one dud. Phil Anselmo doesn’t appear on this one, he left the band before this was recorded. It would have been cool if he was on this demo. Matt Thomas and Jimmy Hipp are excellent guitarists. Hipp does backing vocals and he's okay with his vocals. There’s beyond excellent guitar playing found on this demo, especially on Never Cry Wolf, Dog Eat Dog and Come On Strong. Never Cry Wolf has amazing lead guitar work. Those pinch harmonics on Never Cry Wolf sound beautiful. Perfectly executed pinch harmonics. That shows one of the guitarists has skills. Pulling off pinch harmonics is not easy. Of course, they don't go crazy with the pinch harmonics like Zakk Wylde.

The guitar even sounds good on the not-so-impressive sounding What My Eyes Have Seen. It’s not a dud. I’ll get to the dud later. There’s a real gnarly sounding guitar solo in What My Eyes Have Seen. How about the other guitar solos found on this album? They all sound awesome, but the best one is found on What My Eyes Have Seen. Heavy sounding riffs present on most of the songs and that’s something you should expect on a demo released in 1988.

Dog Eat Dog sounds like a glam rock song, but it’s a heavy sounding glam rock. I like it a lot. It kind of reminds me of Dangerous Toys, but it’s kind like a heavier Dangerous Toys song. Troy Marks sounds really damn good in Dog Eat Dog. He actually sounds damn good on all of the songs. You can tell he puts a lot of emotion in his vocals. He doesn’t put too much emotion, enough emotion to sound good. He puts some real good emotion into What My Eyes Have Seen, but it sounds sappy. The lyrics he sings here are a bit lame and I don’t think they’re that great. They’re not cringe lyrics, but they could have been slightly better.

The drumming on here is basic, but he pounds the hell out of those drums. Steve Joseph knows how to keep in time and he has basic sounding beats you'd find on a typical heavy metal demo recorded in the late 1980’s. He doesn’t do anything really creative whatsoever. It’s mid-paced drumming and he doesn’t go too fast. The bassist R.C. Holmes does basic bass playing and I can barely hear it. The bass playing is there, but nothing memorable.

Now let’s talk about the dud found on this demo. At first, The Damage is Done sounds bad. It sounds bad all the way through. It’s so weak with ballad kind of stuff thrown in. It’s not executed well at all. That’s too bad. Well, except for the vocals and the guitar solo. The guitar solo is surprisingly good on The Damage is Done. They’re supposed to demonstrate how good they are and instead they come up with a lazy effort.

I find that the guitars stand out a lot on this demo. It’s a good demo with one dud on it. The Damage is Done is the dud found on this demo. It’s boring and the guitars are a bit below average. That’s too bad. Razor White would later get signed to Thunder Records and then release their 1980’s sounding full-length album in 1991.