HISTORY
In America the thrash-metal explosion was churning out bands, both good and bad. The thrash-metal genre delivered technical bands like
Megadeth, other bands became more hilarious like
Nuclear Assault and bands like
Overkill became became famous heavy hitters. But among all these bands there was also the extreme-metal bands, bands that played an even more aggressive style of thrash-metal. One of those bands were
Devastation, this band was formed in 1986 in
Texas but is now disbanded but they left three albums to the world. This band was not one of the most unique bands but they did grab the attention to the metal underground movement.
Devastation plays a thrash formula which would be best described as a mix between
Dark Angel and maybe bands like
Sepultura and/or even
Slayer. This concotion became a very deadly mix, especially in the album that you will be getting introduced to.
ALBUM INFORMATION / LYRIC MESSAGES
This album is packed with lethal and extreme music, devastating and catchy guitar work, chaotic soloing, thunderous drum work, grinding bass and torn thrash vocals. This album is a non-stop thrash machine and it is called
''Signs Of Life'', the album delivers forceful songs over and over again but beware of some reptitivity in this album though. Anyway, if you are familiar to bands like
Dark Angel and maybe early
Kreator you should read more in this review. Lyrics, well this band does not like to sing a about peace, love or flowers and bees thats for sure. This band is like most other thrash-metal bands, their lyrics are basically focused on the violent areas, the sing often about violence, life and death and so on. Most bands used and uses these lyric themes just because it sounds cool, and it helps the band(s) to get a bad a** attitude, this is just my own personal view about the lyrics though.
THE BAND MEMBERS
Rodney Dunsmore - Vocalist in this a** kicking bad, I can't admit that he is a good metal singer but his vocal character is though very cool. I wouldn't call this as singing, rather more like loud speaking or shouting, his voice feels a bit half-strained and a bit torn maybe. These vocals are pretty neutral if I should be honest with you, it is very hard describe the vocals but I like them becasue they feel a bit classic in this extreme-thrashing genre.
Dave Burke /
Henry Elizondo - The two guitarists in this band, nothing wrong with this guys though. The shredding and lead work is of good quality, the overall guitar work is very thick, half-dense and very heavy. There are not these non-stop riffing sections, there are though many parts in the songs which are very catchy. The guitar solos are though maybe not the best of the bunch but the are good, the solos are often played in fast paces, they are often chaotic and frantic (think
Slayer)
Edward Vasquez - Bassist, finally a thrash bassist with an audible bass! This made the album sound very powerful and heavy, you can hear the bass pretty good, it helps to build up this massive rhythm section. The overall sound feels very heavy and thick just because of the bass, though there are no standout performances from the bassist but he performes with good skills.
David Lozano - Drummer of this band, the most important member in a band. Here you have a huge amount of drum patterns, if you know about the drum monster
Gene Hoglan from
Dark Angel you might have a slim idea how this drummer is. He is no way near
Hoglan but he does his work excellent, the drum patterns are very catchy, heavy and very classic for the extreme thrash bands.
MY THOUGHTS ABOUT THIS ALBUM
I thought that this album was awesome! I really liked
Dark Angel's material but this was slightly better actually, the music was very heavy, catchy, extreme but it still didn't felt
so exreme. One thing I liked about this album was the massive thrash songs that the band kept churning out from this album, every song had a half-dense and heavy sound which made the songs so brutaly heavy. The songs had first a hyper fast pattern and then the song decreased in pace and a catchier song pattern started to take shape.
Desolation,
Signs Of Life and
Tomorrow We Die were some songs that really stuck to my head because of the song patterns, all of them had great musicianship, the overall variety was good and you just had to bang your head. A second thing I liked was the production, it maybe wasen't the greatest production but the overall material just felt so cool. The songs had this little blury or half-gloomy ''atmosphere'' or whatever, its hard to desricbe but my point is that the production maybe isen't the best but it made the album still sound very good. I guess I can mention a third thing that was good and that was the vocals, who said that you have to be a perfect vocalist to make an abum sound great?
Rodney doesn't appears to have any real singing abilities but he makes the band to shine bright in the extreme thrash-metal scene, the vocals goes along great with the aggressive music in my opinion. I thought that this album was awesome but there was just one little thing that I didn't liked so much, the album felt a bit repetitive. It seemed like the band took one song and transformed it into eight different versions, but this is not a huge bad thing though. I enjoyed nearly every song but some songs felt a bit similar to other songs from time to time.
MY CONCLUSION
There you have it, I really enjoyed basically every second of this album most because of my great passion for thrash-metal. The album was just pumping exploding thrash music in my ears and I never got tired, thanks to the overall production that will say. I will definitely recommend this album to thrashers but then I mean extreme thrashers, if you like bands like
Metallica and other similar bands you might not find this interesting. But if you like bands like
Dark Angel,
Slayer,
Morbid Saint,
Hypnosia you will definitely enjoy this, I think that death-metal people should check this out or the band's latest work called
''Idolatry''. I hope that this reviw has been a good guidance for you dear metal-heads and if you have any sorts of criticism just let me know.
RECOMMENDED TRACKS (
Or the whole album to be honest)
-- Tomorrow We Die
-- Desolation
-- Retribution
-- Signs Of Life
This album will get a 5/5, but just because that the album feel so classic in the extreme thrash-metal scene, you won't be disappointed!
