Illusions

I can’t possibly forget the day when I got exposed to these chemicals here the first time; a guy gave me the cassette some time in 1989, warning me that this was “some truly brutal stuff”… and it was truly brutal stuff for sure, no second opinion about that, one that made me forget the name Sadus faster than the one of my gorgeous big-breasted high school chemistry teacher who only briefly made out with me in the heat of the graduation ball, refusing to give me the… full-on nude revision of the Mendeleev table that I was expecting as a farewell gesture in a small remote, seemingly built for this purpose, park/garden. What the hell was her name indeed: Georgia, Stephanie, Seduca… yeah, that last one!

Forget it, nevermind; what really matters here is that Darren Travis and the ever-steady Co. were feeling quite angry at this early stage of their career, their sole intention being on spitting as much bile and venom over the (un)suspecting fanbase. They grabbed the good old thrash straight for the throat, twisted its neck, and forced it into a most uncivilized marriage with the up-and-coming death metal, more unceremoniously than their European brethren Messiah and Protector even.

Nah, I wasn’t ready for such anti-musical atrocities in the late-80’s; and it wasn’t until I bumped into the excellent “Elements of Anger” in 1997 that I recalled the band and decided to revisit their back catalogue, invariably confronting this illusory recording again. More than 20 years down the line I still have problems taking it seriously, and this blitzkrieg therapy was by no means meant to be viewed as such in the first place, its title a most telling one: “Hold no illusions whatsoever, folks; we are much more proficient musicians than what you’re hearing here, and we’ll surely blow your socks off with our future exploits. Let’s merely scare the livin’ hell out of you for a start.”

And the guys by all means achieved both as first we have a pile of really toxic chemicals to wade through, and with the utmost caution we will make a first timid step inside, only to see/hear our worst fears realised down to the... it’s certain death we’re facing, and the song of the same title promises no mercy with “Pleasure to Kill” copulating with “Misanthropy”, with Travis assiduously supervising this heinous act with his hellish shouty rendings. Expect no coitus interruptus here under any form as the melee goes on unabated, “Sadus Attack” bursting all borders of musical decency with its near-grindcore layout, its shining example loyally followed later by similarly-styled outrages like “Torture” and “And Then You Die”. Yes, lots of odes to death and dying here, some of them served in a marginally more bridled (“Hands of Fate”) manner, others (“Twisted Face”, “Fight or Die”) racing with Cryptic Slaughter’s eye-gouging debut every bit of the relentless, hyper-brutal way. The title-track creates the illusion (no pun intended) that something more tamed and more intricate can get stirred, and indeed the cleverer, less aggressive riffage applied on it is a covert harbinger of what followed suit on later instalments.

Wow… if the mentioned Cryptic Slaughter outing is, and will always be, the epitome of unrestrained, still loosely thrash-fixated, over-the-top brutality from the 80’s (and beyond), the album reviewed here can rightfully be placed right after it, but only once it’s won the tough tussle with Protector’s “Misanthropy”, (Incubus’ “Serpent Temptation”, anyone?) of course. The less squeamish must have come out of this half an hour with a very wide smile on their faces cause, honestly, not many were the albums that could capture the tag “extreme aggression” so well in its entirety back then; for those who cared, of course, as the simplistic primal, unpretentious barrage experienced definitely found its fanbase in the late-80’s the band not too concerned about the more serious tendencies that had sprung up at the time and had started shifting things towards more proficient ways of execution. The Sadus team gave a sheer lesson to both the more and less initiated in how one could shred like demented, and still remain within the thrash boundaries without tumbling heads-over-heels into less trodden at the time, more brutal territories. The stone was cast, the mission was accomplished, now it remained to be seen where next to conquer…

and the next conquest came, covered in black from top to bottom, two years later the guys turning to the other extreme, the technical metal field, to everyone’s utter surprise. Yeah, not many were those who thought that Sadus, of all acts, would become one of the prime exponents of the progressive/technical death/thrash idea throughout the 90’s; not after they had recently provided one of the most stripped-down, most primal examples of metal extremity… it turned out that the guys were paying attention, after all, to the trends on the field; they simply had to gain inertia before stimulating the fans’ imaginations with more intricate soundscapes; and those came in abundance, all the way to their last instalment so far, the divisive “Out for Blood”.

The fabulous trio haven’t been a very regular presence on the scene in the new millennium, sad(us)ly; the audience hasn’t been exposed to any insalubrious chemicals recently; chemistry is losing its position as a major subject in the schools around the world… and just to think that this nightmarish situation can so easily be corrected with a single compulsive brutal revision of Mendeleev’s table…