Strappado

This beats the shit out of the glam band with the same name. Strappado is as far from glam as possible, really. As a play on words of the glam Slaughter's hit song "Up All Night", the Canadian Slaughter's slogan should be "Up all night, kill all day". That's the message I get from Strappado! The Canadian Slaughter plays a primitive form of death/thrash, with a healthy dose of hardcore and Hellhammer.

Slaughter very effectively use two vocalists. Two vocalists can really help vary the songs on an album that could become one-dimensional. One of them does death grunts and thows in a bunch of Tom G. Warrior "Ugh"s for good measure. The other vocalist shouts with a heavy sneer. They both definitely sound Canadian, just listen every time they yell "Incinera-toooor!"

The bass is pretty nice too. It is dead center between the guitars, giving them a powerful low-end complement.

Then there's the drums. This guy absolutely piledrives the kit. It doesn't matter what speed the song is, he still beats hard. He doesn't play too sloppy either.

Slaughter plays at exactly two speeds here: thrash so fast that the drums border on blast beats, and bludgeoning midpaced songs. The music isn't too complicated; each song tends to have one riff that repeats over and over, but never to a level that bores the listener. I'm a really bad guitarist but was able to figure most of the album's riffs out in a few minutes. Not that these riffs aren't good or anything, they're kickass.

The bottom line is that Strappado is a genre-defining death/thrash album. It's filled to the brim with catchy thrash riffs, and is so fast in places that you can't help but headbang to it. Any serious thrasher needs this. Period.