Slow Motion

Sucking them faster than you can say “Suckspeed!”, I should tell you. It beats me why this fucking... sorry, sucking process began so early provided that 1991 was still a very good year for all metal genres, with the subsequent metamorphoses only hinted at. No, not for our friends here who abandoned their enjoyable energetic thrash/crossover optimism from the debut and decided to go all over the place, all in a not very good way at all, on the album reviewed here.

Well, with all the speed sucked inadvertently “slow motion” remained the only option for these once valiant German minstrels who did something to establish the thrash/crossover style on German soil alongside S.D.I. (the debut), Lavatory and Rumble Militia. This fact makes it even more painful to sit through this effort here which still partially deserves the “thrash/crossover” tag thanks to a couple of more vivid, more dynamic cuts ("Trash Movie Slow Motion", the really hard-trying “Try Harder”) and the convincing clean uplifting semi-punky vocals the latter one of the few redeeming qualities witnessed here. However, the brakes are stepped on early with “In My Bed” with the timid grooves occupying quite a bit of space, an early sign that another wave was coming to land on the European shores, brought by priest-slaughtering exhorders and roaring panteras. If those elements were not that sloppily and clumsily embedded here this number would have been cited as a true pioneer; alas, it remains a failed attempt at bringing the groove on the other side of the Atlantic not to mention other, even more inept variations on the same theme like the dragging, ultimately tedious stoner ballad/semi-ballad "Guernica" and the hilarious blasé frolicer “Luxury Town”. The more relevant, energetic nods to the Motorhead ("Till the Next Time") heritage only make the situation sadder for the missed opportunity as there’ll hardly be next time considering the near-flop cooked here.

And yet, there was next time, as a matter of fact, as the guys completed their surrender to the groovy realms with the third instalment and the EP after it, becoming arguably the first advocates of the modern post-thrash idea in Germany; only that even post-thrash would be a bold statement having in mind the leisurely executed music on those… how depressed the guys must have been to come up with this unpretentious comic stuff remains a speculation. Well, at least there was an end to this depression of some sorts, the band getting rid of it eventually… slowly but surely.