Fifteen songs in twelve and a half minutes. It’s the first line of their press release, and I’ll be damned if it isn’t a pertinent one. This CD is loaded with some of most brutal thrash around and it left me exhausted after just listening to it. The haunting image of Nosferatu on the front cover is wholly appropriate – the entire album is a lesson in vocal aggression and there’s some nice guitar work going on behind it in parts, too. However, I have a real problem with the drums on this release; it’s not that they’re bad as such, it’s just that, to my ears at least, they seemed to stick out like sore thumbs on some tracks as just being a bit wrong. I’m aware that I’ll probably be slammed by the hardcore community for daring to criticise a less-than-perfect sounding snare, but when it sounds pretty good on some tracks I’d question their criticism. Although I guess that could partly be accounted for by the delay between the recording of the two separate parts of this album as it’s a combination two recording sessions done in the late 90s.
‘Red Tape’ stands out as a class track. The intro which mocks organised religion in a comparison to all those crazy ‘up teh punx’ types draws a wry smile, but the song itself is a serious affair with a sharp (if faint) guitar solo three quarters of the way through which really does go right through you on a decent set of speakers. ‘Sample’ is another awesome example of brief, gut-wrenching anger which is unfortunately over all too soon.
So, I can recommend this if you’re already into this sort of thing, but it’s not an easy introduction to it if you’re not. The album itself is not perfect because of the fact it’s a combination of two releases and the last few tracks are definitely a turn down in quality from the tracks mentioned in detail above. You can quite easily do a lot worse in this area, though, than to get yourself this.
http://fastcore.com/assholeparade.htm
Spud