The Dregs

This is definitely one of the pleasant surprises this year, an unexpected comeback from one of the earliest sign-offs from the late-80’s/early-90’s Turkish metal roster whose legacy back then only amounted to the “Brain in Chains” 4-track demo, a finely executed slab of semi-technical retro thrash which was convincing enough for one to say yes, Turkey got talent, and to make him/her spend more time over there looking for other similarly-styled gems.

Alas, the guys disappeared very shortly after, but are back in the new millennium, and although it took them a while to produce something new, this tasty product here was more than worth the wait. The album is spearheaded by two cuts from the demo, the brisk semi-technical roller-coaster "Disordered" and the excellent “Rust in Peace” qualifier “Brain in Chains”, the title-track from said demo, a highly energetic shredder with twists and turns galore. Those two are also a bit misleading as the new material isn’t exactly built on too many fast-paced histrionics; in fact, the speedy moments here are largely featured on those two, but there’s a really clever, progressive vibe running both over and underneath reflected in the surreal abstract Voivod-ish masterpiece "I Am God" and the dispassionate, but very effective psychedelic thrasher "Trial by Fire" on which the only relative spoiler would be the quarrelsome shouty vocals when a composed clean crooner from the ranks of Snake (Voivod again) would have produced more miracles.

The latter keep coming, mind you, and although the band lose inertia to an extent in the middle on a string of more leisurely-performed power/proto-thrash numbers, they compensate with two ingeniously-woven “ballad turns to thrash” roller-coasters, the more jumpily executed, nervy “Age of the Lie”, and the both more complex and more aggressive wonder “Obscured Mind”, a diverse progressive thrasher that accumulates intensity gradually until it nearly reaches the headbanging parametres at the end.

Welcome back, sceptics, a job very well done, a varied package that would tend to a wider range of metal heads with its bigger stylistic coverage, one that may enervate the hard-boiled thrash maniacs at times, but one that would also make them stop and listen, this stoppage inevitably followed by nods of approval and why not even the casual more enthusiastic applause. Truth be told, the 90’s Turkish thrash metal scene has never actually retired, Metalium, Ascraeus, and Blaster are still around albeit not making noise on very regular bases; the once-been-thrashers Pentagram as well, and certainly Darkphase, the band with whom several Sceptic Age members have become involved in the past few years…

in other words, scepticism is out of the question on Turkish soil at present; if dregs can get the job done, imagine what would happen if these folks start producing some truly elite stuff.