Pray for War

Like many British thrashers, Virus were somewhat late in the game and quite affected at first by the much larger punk and hardcore movements swarming the U.K. at the time. This would change in time, but for the moment, Virus were purely in the camp of raw noise mongers like British forerunners Venom, Onslaught (early), and Broken Bones. One might even say that this album made Virus appear to be Britain's answer to Voivod.

The album plugs away pretty quickly, and the fluid - if random - solos pepper the otherwise straightforward songwriting present here. Vocals are of the raucous shouted variety, which isn't very "metal" by comparison to other thrash bands at the time, and gives them their link to the aforementioned punk and hardcore scenes. Production on the disc is appropriately abysmal, and it sounds like the band ran drunkenly through a set list live in the studio all in one take instead of applying any sort of production methods - other than mixing - to the recording process. The fact that some songs sound produced by completely different hands is particularly jarring.

All told, this isn't a bad album, but it's more for those whom like this sort of fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants style of thrash, and it sits appropriately alongside debuts by the aforementioned Venom or Voivod than anything being released concurrently in 1987. Unfortunately, finding this one outside of an old LP copy or costly limited-edition re-issue make it's a find only for the die-hard elitist thrasher or hobbyist genre collector.