Eat 'Em Raw

Formed in 1984, New York based Savage Thrust released two demos and one single before their first and the only album Eat 'em Raw, lost among many other speed/thrash albums of the late 80s. The time of thrash metal was coming to an end, giving the way to new metal genres like death metal, which had been already popularized by Death, Carcass, and Possessed, and groove metal, which would soon be invented by Pantera and Exhorder, so few people were interested in another unremarkable release. I think I won't be mistaken if I compare Savage Thrust with Bay Area bands Holy Terror and Laaz Rockit. In comparison with Holy Terror, Savage Thrust are less melodic and in comparison with Laaz Rockit, the Californians had more catchy riffs, solos, and songs in general. Each of these bands had almost clean vocals and mixed speed, thrash, and sometimes a little bit of power metal.

The album starts with an epic low-tempo "Acid Bath" that increases its tempo in the second half of the song. After two minutes of the long, protracted intro of the second song "Speed or Bleed" we can finally hear the speed, promised in the name of the song. But the album was only gaining its speed because other 5 songs, or 25 minutes of unstoppable velocity, will never tire you. I like the guitar tone of Rob Antilla and Edmund Varuolo but there is nothing notable, unique, or catchy in their parts and solos are on a quiet low level which is common for such underground speed/ thrash acts. I can't say much about Bobby Boch's drumming becuase he used the same patterns as 95% of other speed/thrash drummers. Perhaps I would like to point out Boch's drumming in Speed or Bleed. The bass is almost unaudible and I could clearly hear it only during some solos. The voice of Michael Smith is, in my opinion, similar to the voice of Toto Bergmann from Living Death, but thw latter is more sharp.

Eat 'em Raw certainly can't compete with such recognized masterpieces as Iron Angel's Hellish Crossfire, Agent Steel's Skeptics Apocalypse, and many others. The main problem with this album is the lack of variety and the lack of variety is the reason why I can highlight only one song from this album. It would be the last song titled Seed of Demon which has some interesting tempo changes, unlike others. Listening to songs from Madman Marz to the penultimate Infected, I could have believed that it was all one long song. Savage Thrust members must have thought that they needed nothing else if they had fast riffs and fast drumming. What Eat 'em Raw needed was one man, at least a little bit talented as a composer.

I understand people that consider this album as great, but I am not one of them. It is just good. Not great.