Review Summary: Start sucking.
Having your balls out can sometimes put you in a sticky situation. Thankfully, when you have your balls out and you're playing metal, it more or less adds to the experience. Just ask
Solstice. Their thrashy brand of Floridian death metal knows a thing or two about being balls out. Based in Miami, containing members like Rob Barrett (who went on to join
Cannibal Corpse and
Malevolent Creation after providing guitar and vocal duties for Solstice) and some guest solos from the legendary James Murphy of
Death and
Cancer fame, Solstice had all it took to make one hell of an album. It's surprising that they didn't have the amount of success the rest of Florida's scene did back in the early nineties, because their eponymous debut brings the ***ing metal just as hard and just as heavy as any of their other tropical counterparts.
What
Solstice did, and did very well, was make sounding pissed off awesome. Girlfriend cheated on you? Getting picked on at school? Old couple across the street run over your cat on their way to Cracker Barrel? Spin this record and be prepared to bring the full force of your pent up rage crushing down upon the perpetrators in a hail of fists and offers for obligatory apologies on your genitals. Now that you've asserted your masculine dominance, it's ok to put a few pretty things up to make yourself feel better. But don't ***ing overdo it. Take
Solstice's approach and have a few hints of melody here and there; but never, ever cover up the fact that you're still angry and thrashing. Remember, you've still got balls and you want everyone to know it.
Now that you've got the overall feel of what
Solstice were going for, it's time to examine the finer points. The drumming on this angry Miamian debut is incredible and beyond precise. With a nice, thick punch to it, the hyperspeed assault never lets up, complete with blasts and fills from the depths of a nuclear ice age. Rob Barrett's vocal delivery is actually quite unique. It's kind of a throaty, growly thrash yell that, as you probably guessed, sounds pretty pissed off. Most of the lyrical content deals with political outrage, corrupt governments, and the obligatory death and doom, and most of the lines are easily intelligible without the use of printed aids to try and decipher what the *** he's saying.
They even include a nice little cover of
Carnivore's S.M.D (Suck My Dick) which sort of acts to solidify their already obvious thrash influence. The production is nice and clean, so if you like your death metal without all the dirt and grime the old school is known for you have nothing to worry about, except maybe the fact that you might be kind of a pussy. But it's ok, because if you listen to this if might help solve that problem, because
Solstice's debut is one of the best things to come out of Florida in the golden years of the death scene. If you don't like it, well then *** you.
