Review Summary: Unsigned British Columbian thrash that's heavier than a really heavy thing.
Occasionally, I really do wonder why the hell Deranged never got picked up by a major label. My running theory is their geographic circumstances, as all the big Canadian thrash bands of the time (Voivod, Annihilator, Razor) were separated from Deranged's British Columbia by a metric ***load of prairie. Sometimes, location just kills stuff like that, and without relocation, things just can't happen the way they maybe should. If it was for anything different, not least the scarcely fathomable violence of their music, then a great injustice has been done to this world. I'm not going to sit here and say that Deranged would've changed the world of thrash forever;
Place of Torment is fast – extremely fast – aggro and about as beautiful as Brezhnev, but really most of the stylistic innovations by 1989 were the degrees of technicality the genre could be taken down. Perhaps – another theory of their unsigned nature – they were just a couple of years too late to the party; at this juncture, Slayer (probably the most notorious proponents of the go-HAM-for-half-an-hour style) were slowing things down a touch after all.
As such, undeniably their most distinctive asset were the hysterics of Scott Murdoch, which would've maybe fit more neatly into the burgeoning black metal landscapes of Bathory; the power, speed and surprising dexterity channelled into his performance is astounding, while the idiosyncratic 'pterodactyl shrieks' peppered throughout defy all reasonable explanation of human involvement. It bears stressing that Murdoch, on an unpolished demo no less, fronted a band that was tight as a nut even while playing at seemingly terminal velocity. Ross Butterfield and Jason Harvey locked down nailgun riff after nailgun riff, clearly striking every downpick even with the dirty-as-hell production – however, it's obvious they also found time to have fun with their instruments (see the space-age wobble effect during the lead of 'Coercion' for a prime example). It's not as if the riffs are wholly cookie-cutter either to their credit, the dark, twisting verses on 'Before Your Eyes' a particular joy. Tim Sweeting's drums thunder along with boundless energy, the primal snare abuse perhaps doing his watertight kick precision a disservice, while Dave Bentley's bass is less a punctuating tool than a barrelling low-end that should probably come with an earthquake warning.
Maybe it's too much of a jump to say this is among the most extreme thrash records ever, as it's impossible to say how many more unknown demos and forgotten albums there might be which match it punch-for-punch in sheer intensity. However, if only to hear the impressive histrionics of Scott Murdoch and the staggeringly heavy bass of Bentley, this deserves to be heard by those that like their metal loud, fast, and extremely ***ing vicious. It won't be something they'll regret.
