Demolition Hammer
Tortured Existence

Release Date: 1990 | Tracklist

Here’s the short story. Demolition Hammer were a Thrash f*cking Metal band from New York that don’t really get mentioned a lot which is a huge shame because they thrashed really Goddamn hard. We can sit here forever and pontificate about the intricacies of thrash and the numerous layers of complexity hidden within but at the end of the day there’s only three things that are important and most of them involve how Goddamn hard a band thrashes. The others have to do with precision and accessibility/listenability, and the best of the breed manage to combine all these elements in a brutal whirlwind of beautifully morbid thrash-tactic anger and shredtacular riffage. I can name you about 20 bands who thrashed really hard but lacked the other elements that demand ongoing respect and thrash f*cking metal credibility. “Tortured Existence” supersedes the mediocre because it’s one of the most brutally accessible albums to come out of the genre.

Now this isn’t to say that “Tortured Existence” is an “accessible” album by any other standard outside of its inherent genre, nor is it one of the most accessible albums in the genre itself. The key here is this is borderline death metal (take a look at the song titles), and the music is essentially an unstoppable assault of f*cking brutality. They like to talk about the standard stuff like worshipping vicious beasts and slaughtering wooly rhinos and aborting babies and sh*t like that, stuff that Anthrax and Metallica don’t do but Cannibal Corpse certainly does. The difference is Demolition Hammer kind of sounds like a cross between Death (subject matter and intensity), Slayer (rapid fire verse vocals), and Anthrax (shouted chorus gang vocals), only they thrash a hell of a lot harder than the latter, are denser than Slayer, and more accessible than Death. It’s kind of the best of all worlds. In short, “Tortured Existence” thrashes Goddamn hard and is unquestionably brutal and intense but somehow manages to be easy to listen to as long as you know how to properly thrash hard.

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4.2 excellent

Rank: #32 for 1990