Review Summary: It seems these remains are still quite fresh...
In surveying thrash metal’s deceptively inventive period from 1990 to 1994, many acts in the genre had more or less passed from memory for some time, some gaining reappraisal in the likes of Coroner and others continuing to languish in obscurity. For thrash bands with a handful of studio albums published, this was a likelihood but was an almost certainty for bands who never got signed with their demos still floating out in the ether. Illinois’ Epitaph is one of that vast multitude, having only released their 1992 demo tape titled These Rotten Remains before dropping off the face of the Earth along with the majority of its lineup.
Drawn to that frankly album-quality cover art and the desire to find more thrash metal gems from the Midwest, I had found a release that surprised me in each of its four tracks. These Rotten Remains takes the busy, overtly harmonized riffing that is a mainstay of albums like Artillery’s By Inheritance and Despair’s Decay of Humanity and incorporates it into the more convoluted compositions of their contemporaries. The result is a unique take on the sound with melodic technical riffs that have a regal, lurching gait to them that are pieced apart and put back together through panicked stop-start arrangements with chilling dissonant leads embellishing them. Highlights of this are Systematic Repression and Cycle of Law, both of which morph into some truly free-wheeling displays of this accomplishment.
In spite of their keen melodic edge, the vocals sound like they belong on a noise rock or post-hardcore release from around that time in parts of the demo and lend a street-level but nevertheless disturbed aggression to the other performances. Due to this, Epitaph take on a similar feeling to what New Jersey’s Mind Eraser was doing in the same year. Of course, Epitaph’s skittering yet delightfully byzantine sound often matches that of Deathrow’s Deception Ignored's more intricately arranged approach which really cuts it into being its own niche.
Unfortunately, there appears to be no real spiritual successor that the members attempted. They were yet another thrash metal band to have fallen away. However, they had contributed a compelling chapter to the tomes of thrash metal and technical/progressive metal. Something that I think is worth holding in high regard, its obscurity be damned.
