Illusions

This is thrash stretched to its absolute limit in terms of velocity and ferocity. If you’ve heard Sadus’ latest (Out For Blood) then I share my condolences but don’t even think about skipping out on Illusions. Everything about this awesome just rapes face; the riffs are impossibly fast, the vocals are ridiculously awesome and raw, and Steve Digorgio shows his roots as a superb bassist. Lots of people are all too eager to yell “Reign in Blood” when confronted with “Illusions” but I find that comparison highly inaccurate. Illusions is faster, more technical, less incoherent, more memorable and more “in your face”. Consequently, it ranks as my favourite thrash album of all time.

One of the interesting things about this album is the varied song structure. You have your basic cyclic passages like “Certain Death”, a two minute intro of pure thrashing goodness minus vocals in “Undead” and a couple short completely balls-out songs like “Sadus Attack”, not to mention a somewhat ambient outro in “Chemical Exposure“. With all the diversity in structure, the album remains unpredictable and holds your attention better than any tiresome formulaic album.

Everything about Illusions is almost impossibly fast; I want to get that out of the way right now so that I needn’t reiterate when describing the guitars or vocals, uncompromising speed is the single most important axiom this album rests upon. The guitars have an edgy yet satisfying deep tone and tear through the riffs with impressive precision. The riffs themselves can be quite technical and are actually extremely varied, as you’ll find out in `Hands of Fate`, but they are rooted in the same style as `Reign in Blood" and `Pleasure to Kill" only they seem to make much more sense, incorporating a light sense of melody into the riffs. Most of the solos here are pretty evocative of 80`s thrash and death metal, where speed and chaos is favoured over melody or coherence. That being said, some of the solos are noticeably more controlled and thought out than others, which gives the impression that the songs here were written over a long period of time and that the band’s song writing skills evolved over this time.

This might just be an idiosyncratic affinity of my own, but I absolutely adore Darren Travis` vocals here. He has a high pitched yet brutally raspy scream that pierces the listener’s ear with unbridled fury and viciousness. The most noteworthy performance comes on `Torture" where he emulates what sounds like some dude being tortured. His shrieks (that’s likely what they are most accurately referred to as) are absolutely earsplitting on this track, and while I normally dislike the style, it certainly finds its niche on “Torture“.

Steve Digorgio’s bass antics are present even with his first band and he plays with a style that just hasn’t been emulated in thrash metal since. You can hear the strings hit the pickups every now and then, which is that same nostalgic eccentricity present on Autopsy’s “Severed Survival” and several other Digorgio-related projects. Bass solos pop up over and under riffs with great frequency in almost every song. This is a great change of pace for the more extreme side of thrash metal, which tends to focus on guitars a little too much and downplay the bass’s importance and presence. I do wish the high end of the bass was more audible, but just take a listen to the outrageous bass solo on “Torture” and you’ll find it’s hard to ask for anything more. His playing gives the album an edge that no other band can contend for.

The drums sound very nice, well mic’d and well played. Though the kit isn’t abused as profusely as the guitars or the bass, it does an excellent job of keeping up, and hitting the right cymbals on the right beats, making those riffs seem all the more powerful. The drumming on this album is a clinic in unobtrusive, rhythm based drumming that doesn’t overpower the music. It isn’t as though the dude is a slowpoke by any means, conversely he’s pretty damn fast for his time but it isn’t at the hyperbolic level that the rest of the album runs on.

Regardless of what Sadus has become, I feel as though they can lay claim to what might be the fastest and most ferocious thrash album ever recorded. I’m subtracting three points for sound quality and mixing issues, but otherwise this can be considered a perfect album, at least in the context of thrash. It blows down the gates during “Certain Death” with a clear cut goal in mind, namely; to thrash your fucking face off, and it executes like so few albums do and succeeds as well as any great album does. If you’re a fan of faster thrash like Dark Angel, Slayer, Kreator, Possessed and everything in between, this might as well be your holy grail.