Rigor Mortis vs. the Earth

A most audacious undertaking that was… to take on the whole world… but if someone had to do it, it had got to be the Rigors. After all, how many acts out there can brag about the possession of a guitar wizard like Mike Scaccia (R.I.P.)… take a short pause here, to honour the man who most untimely left this Earth ten years ago…

but he and his comrades did lay the foundations for this bellicose enterprise, first with the seismic debut, a most glorious thrash/death compendium carved by Scaccia’s visionary pyrotechnics, the openly aggressive delivery firmly putting them on the road to an eventual full-on death metal baptism, having in mind said genre’s growing popularity, the late Bruce Corbitt (R.I.P.) most handsomely epitomizing the ultimate threatening shouter behind the mike for this kind of exploits... another short commemorative pause taken here.

Exploits which took a really nice “freaky” direction with the “Freaks” EP a year later, except that this wasn’t a total surrender to the deathly currents. The band had chosen the thrash trajectory to pursue, doing an admirable job with a more technical lustre exhibited, the latter culminating on the supreme instrumental saga “Six Feet Under”, ravishing multi-layered thrash in all shapes and nuances, a milestone in vocalless musical genius, Scaccia’s crowning achievement.

Sounded like a dress rehearsal for a potential showdown with Planet Earth this tantalizing “freaky” occurrence, and here they are, our heroes, taking the world by storm. Add an imposing atmospheric orchestral intro to get everyone in the mood for full-fledged classic thrash feats, and half the job is done... yep, that’s right; half. The big ambition displayed with the intro doesn’t plant its roots very deeply here, the guys scattering their delivery far’n wide, just courting and teasing the death metal fraternity (“Asphyxia”, “Mummified”) again before attempting some meeker galloping power/thrash with “SOG”. Later on there’s crossover (“Dead Fish”), Motorhead-ish rock’n rollas (“Speed Whore”), a faithfully reproduced cover of The Ramones (“Psycho Therapy”), and the pretty cool but deliberately non-thrashy hard’n heavy instrumental “Afterbirth of a Midget”, this one at least taking full advantage of Scaccia’s masterful handling of the six strings.

The axeman also pulls himself together on the standout technical shredder “The Rack”, the undisputable highlight here, but elsewhere he doesn’t strain himself, still giving his fair share to the sculpting of this not very predictable but also hardly exceptional opus, the band diversifying their palette with a wider gamut of strokes, hoping to reach wider audience. Nope, that wasn’t the way, although again there was nothing inherently wrong with this album; it’s just that the capricious 90’s generation was ultimately hard to please with retro fanfares… and it turned out that it wasn’t exceedingly happy with the death metal streak, either, as that last genre couldn’t quite reach a golden status, falling under the groovy/numetal hammer. In this train of thought, the guys would have hardly covered themselves with fortune and glory if having chosen the fields of death earlier, even with such a confrontational, scary presence as Corbitt. Scaccia never ventured into the tech-death realm, leaving the latter to musicians from other acts like Death, Pestilence, Gorguts…

The band folded so shortly after this effort’s release that the impression left was that they themselves mustn’t have been very happy with the final result. Quite honestly, they have nothing to be ashamed of; the uncertain early-90’s environment produced much worse offenders than this diverse, charmingly unfocused recording which still contains enough attractive tunes to compel me to sit sometimes and give it a spin from beginning to end. I never fall into fits and seizures the way I do when listening to the first instalment, save for moments from the mentioned “The Rack”, but I still commend the band for trying to confront the whole world… back in those times when it seemed like our beloved planet was up for grabs by new invaders… and a breeze of diverse old school metallisms could possibly prevent the latter from violating it beyond repair.