Strappado

Strappado. This is a cult for the early death/thrash metal movement and a great album. In Canada there was another band that was doing more or less the same Slaughter music in the same period, and that band was Sacrifice. They were the precursors in that beautiful country of a genre that was developing worldwide with great bands such as Death, Possessed, Kreator, Sodom, Bathory, Sepultura, Sarcofago and many others.

Their goal was to bring the classic violent thrash metal to another level in brutality and heaviness. The experiment was achieved here, without forgetting the main genre it comes from. More or less 30 minutes to show all their abilities in destroying everything with panzer drums and fast guitars. Their distortion was already innovative and pure death metal with a fuzz, heavy as hell, sound. The vocals were half way between Celtic Frost down tone and the classic thrash metal ones.

“Disintegrator/ Incinerator” is a classic. The fast tempos are focused on the first part with a following long series of mid paced, obscure and bludgeoning riffs. The snare drum sound is really old fashioned with dark and pounding beats. Impossible not to notice a heavy Hellhammer influence in the guitars of “Nocturnal Hell” and they never forget that lesson in violence by the Suisse masters of doom/black-thrash during the whole album. So we can find lots of ultra-heavy mid paced parts, suddenly interrupted by faster sounds in pure old thrash style.

“Tortured Souls” and “Parasites” are the classic examples of proto-death metal intensity with lots of dark passages, few growls and sudden speed parts to blow up your head. So often the singer says “Ugh!” like Tom G. Warrior and I like it a lot. The vocals parts are totally insane with that speed and dark tonality. It seems that the more you go on listening to this album, the more you face truly heavy and fast songs! Yep! So listen to “The Curse”, “Strappado” and “Maim To Please”. Holy shit…this is unbelievable. They even destroyed the previous, already great, songs.

This album is total violence with a great sense of songwriting and truly admirable attitude. This is a cult that no one in this kind of sounds should overlook. An earth-shattering piece of art. You must buy it and that’s the bottom line because Slaughter said so.