Crux of the Mosh

You know when the only compilation to feature any of your songs years after your band’s broken up is titled “Incredibly Strange Metal” that you’ve truly succeeded artistically… at creating one of the most bizarre metal albums from the '80s, that in my estimation manages to fail on almost every conceivable level. The album I’m talking about is Crux of the Mosh, released in 1989 by Torn Flesh, an obscure Christian metal band from southern Ohio.

First off, to address the worst aspect of this album: the vocal performance is a complete mess that manages to cross the line from being inoffensively bland, to offensively godawful. The vocalist's sense of timing is especially abysmal. During many of the verses, he just crams as many words in as possible without any regard for the underlying rhythm of the music. But even when he actually figures out the rhythm, his vocals are still monotone and one-dimensional owing to the almost complete absence of melody or technique. Moreover, his vocal style just consists of pretending to sound angry all the time, and the result is so forced and unconvincing that it's almost funny, until you realise it isn't an elaborate joke. Also, what he’s actually ranting about specifically isn’t much better. You can see the lyrics for yourself (some are very distasteful by today’s standards) but in short, they’re a bunch of propagandistic sermons about embracing God and Jesus. The only positive is that the ridiculous way they’re delivered makes it impossible to take them with any degree of seriousness.

The atrocious vocals could have been somewhat redeemed by solid musicianship, but unfortunately the instrumental performances here are very subpar and generic. The music these guys are playing can barely be considered thrash metal, as much of this is fairly standard heavy metal with some half-hearted attempts at aggression tacked on. The guitarists’ palm muting technique is poor, which makes the riffs sound sloppy whenever they reach faster tempos. Even the soloing is lackluster; the solo in ‘Fire Escape’ has a tapping section that the lead guitarist messes up, yet somehow that take still made it onto the album, demonstrating a baffling lack of quality control. To make matters worse, the production lacks punch especially on the drums, neutering the overall impact. Transitions between sections are either poorly executed or just nonexistent; for example, ‘Innocent Eyes’ can’t decide whether it wants to be acoustic or speed metal, switching between styles instantaneously with no buildup whatsoever.

Another major issue with this album is the amount of filler across its 39 minute length. ‘World Pollution’ takes a third of its runtime to get properly started, while maintaining the illusion that it’s not wasting its time by sampling some audio of news reports over a buildup that seems to go nowhere. Many other tracks have a similar problem, due to the inclusion of lengthy intros that only serve to distract from the songs, which were already lacking in substance to begin with. Meanwhile, ‘Man’s Best Friend’ is mostly one generic riff on repeat, while ‘Innocent Eyes’ drags itself out on an annoying riff for way too long. However, the one filler track that encapsulates the weirdest aspects of this album is ‘Happy Birthday’, which clocks in at just under a minute. Imagine something like Nuclear Assault’s ‘Hang the Pope’, but way worse. It consists entirely of the vocalist chanting “Happy Birthday” ad nauseam over a beat that gradually gets faster, with annoying pitch shifted backing vocals randomly thrown into the mix.

Overall, Crux of the Mosh is a strong contender for the worst thrash metal album of all time, if one considers it as such instead of Christian rock that was just trying to emulate a genre when it was at its commercial peak. Thankfully it fell into almost complete obscurity after being released, with few people if any hearing the messages contained within it, so even as an evangelical mission statement it failed. In fact, it’s only been thanks to the internet that we can now hear it again in all its awfulness and unintended hilarity, for better or worse.