The Laws of Scourge

For all of the highly individual elements that Sarcofago has exhibited since Antichrist left Sepultura and started this twisted marriage of black, death and thrash metal, this band has actually proven itself to be very cognizant of the changing musical horizons of the day. Their sound was unto itself unprecedented when compared to most, but it was still possessed of a foundation that was built off the precedents set by Wagner's first band, along with the earliest purveyors of extreme metal in Bathory, Celtic Frost, Possessed, Sodom and company. But with the onset of the 90s a lot of these bands had either folded their tents or branched into other sounds, and Sarcofago found themselves changing with the flock, albeit to a lesser extent, and thus "The Laws Of Scourge" stands as one of their finest, but also one of their more commonplace offerings.

The overall vibe of this album is pretty well in conjunction with the slightly more Bay Area informed mode of death/thrash that Kreator and Sepultura had dabbled with on "Coma Of Souls" and "Arise" respectively, informed a little bit by some similar sounding acts out of the Florida death scene as well. With this has come a lot less of a black metal aesthetic to the overall atmosphere, largely culminating in a handful of isolated keyboard sections that actually sound a bit closer to the dabbling of a few early 90s death metal acts than the overt mysticism of the later melodic black metal scene which used them to a far greater extent. This is largely an album that relies on force of impact, crushing the listener's will with pummeling riff sections and wild lead guitar gymnastics, essentially translating the insanity of late 80s Vio-Lence and Forbidden into a death/thrash context.

In a similar manner to a number of extremely advanced and technical thrash albums coming out of Northern California, things have a tendency to go long and are deeply involved. Even a slower, plodding growl fest like "Midnight Queen" is more indicative of a rapid changing Bay Area song with a slower tempo and a slight death/doom tendency to the overall feel of things. But for the most part, this thing drives along with the speed and intensity of a pure thrash slaughter, including such riveting festivals of horror and mayhem as "Piercings" and "Screeches From The Silence" which set most of the agenda for this album. There are also some shorter and more straight up high tempo cruisers like "The Black Vomit" (a hold over from the band's mid 80s demo days) and the title song definitely make an impressive run of things and offer a reminder of the simpler origins of this outfit, but even they are presented in a more overtly early 90s character and the latter occasionally wanders into Morbid Angel territory at a few key points.

It's a bit curious that while most bands tend to evolve by incorporating newer influences, this band ended up doing so by cutting away some of their formative ones while augmenting others, almost as if pruning a tree. Apart from the busier lead guitar sections, which are definitely indicative of an early 90s thrash influence and the slightly greater frequency of blast beat sections, this doesn't really venture too far out of the context that this band has always existed in. The overall production quality is a bit sleeker, resulting in a more powerful guitar crunch that definitely ups the ante in terms of aggression and heaviness, but it's not difficult to isolate the mid 80s death/thrash influences that continue to linger on here, much as they did for Sepultura on their two more purely thrash oriented albums "Beneath The Remains" and "Arise". It's tough to go wrong with this band, but this definitely stands as one of their most impressive albums, and definitely a good pickup for anyone who likes death/thrash that leaned a bit more towards the latter half of the hybrid.