Review Summary: According to English Thesaurus*, ["rotor/noun/1. Rotating mechanism consisting of an assembly of rotating airfoils..."]. Those guys deserved using such band name through this aggressive thrash release!
Prologue. After successful, and in other hand, the riot of Metallica's concert which's held in Jakarta in April 1993, Rotor seemed to have a blessing in disguise. Joined the stage and played as opening act for the world thrash big-name, was undoubtedly Rotor's great momentum to release debut album
Behind The 8th Ball under notable local indie-label, Airo. Indonesian metalheads have responded the album more than a warmly-hearted welcome. That was the first thrash album ever of Indonesian thrash metal band. Therefore, the album is arguably the most inspiring metal album in context of Indonesian metal scene.
Rotor's
Behind The 8th Ball was a small spark to other fellow country-mates of thrash metal bands to create and release their own original works. Many younger bands only looked in deeply-impressed, and at the same time wished they were Rotor. Of course, this sort of feeling won't help, and won't give any true and real contribution for their metal-scene progression. However in the end,
Behind The 8th Ball surely can't be eliminated from Indonesian metal scene history. Among Indonesian metalheads, it's enthusiastically well-accepted and most of them agreed to consider it as classic stuff. Yes, international thrash big-names such as Slayer, Metallica, Kreator, Megadeth, Sepultura, Sadus, ect, are obviously inspirational thrash heroes. Anyway, to create a metal scene keep alive and stay enthusiastic, local hero is more than a need. So, there it was Rotor's important role. They do deserve the predicate, and yes, Rotor has gained it!
Album Review. Regarding the album as whole, sound quality is quite raw. It's also well-balanced with only few minor flaws on it. The vocals possibly will be a bit annoying. It's not groovy and tasteful at all. It's also hard to decide whether vocalist was singing or just speaking and shouting with furious raspy anger. Beside that, vocals character was inconsistent. Mostly, the weaker vocals side came from the songs which were sung in English. In other contrary side, two songs which were sung in Indonesian such as
Peluit Phobia and
Gatholoco, are obviously impressive! Rotor had strong vocals character and original signature in those two songs, rather than partly English-song where they still had to find their own precise touch.
Then musically, guitarist Irvan Sembiring technically skilled. He offers many aggressive and precise riffs that deal with being thrashy and brutal at the same time. In other side, his solos, actually it's not so memorable and twisting. Rotor choosed the more harmonic approach rather than the intensity side of melodiousness. In two-three songs, they also managed to put Javanese (or Bali) scale into the solos. Song such as
Peluit Phobia and
Gatholoco are fine examples to check out. Then drumming part, Bakkar has displayed a strong musicianship throughout the album. He was able to play a solid drumming with ferocious drum-beat of hitting, high snare tempo of thrashing, all is amazingly well-delivered due to his technical ability and the speed of playing.
Regarding songwriting composition, the album is also varied. Inside, the album is only about thirty eight minutes of music with ten tracks included in. Mostly, each song was arranged in adequate different structure. Perhaps, only
Spontaneous Live that's so funny and quite strange in other hand, or, some people will say it ridiculous! The song was recorded in live track of jamming session. There's no any explanation out-there whether Rotor has planned (written) it before, or they just played and recorded it spontaneously. The song lyric tells about bassist Judapran (Juda) that always come late on rehearsal, therefore his band-mates were so angry at him, and then they played and jammed without the bass player. In fact, there's only guitar and drums sound in the song, none bass guitar. The lyric something like this;
...Hoi, we're playin' without bass player, man! Fuck Juda, he's always late! Never on time....No, no, why, no, he's still sleeping at home. Oh, my God! He's still sleeping with.... Ridiculous, isn't it? Up to the listener to judge!
About
Behind The 8th Ball lyrical themes, aside from funny and ridiculous theme on
Spontaneous Live, other tracks have serious themes. The song like
Nuclear Is The Solution? is about the world peace,
Peluit Phobia is about dealing with corruption, and
Gatholoco is about the deviated-mystical leader based on old Javanese literature script, Gatholoco.
The conclusion, it’s fairly enough to say the album is damn great, or a bit higher, somewhat excellent. This is not another generic and mediocre thrash metal album. It does offer the goods, complex and energetic sound. Therefore, any thrash metal fan who plans to collect worthy stuff from each corner of the world should give this one a chance to listen. Then, let's the musical taste speak itself and valuate the stuff subjectively or even better objectively!
Epilogue. Within eight years of the career (disbanded in 1999), Rotor has released four studio album and one re-mastered compilation. Perhaps,
Tribute to Rotor (2002) album which's covered by various notable metal bands from both Indonesia and Malaysia (only one Malaysian band participated, Sil Khannaz), is a real proof that they have influences or at least they got a respect from younger domestic Indonesia metal band, or even wider-regionally, the nearest neighbor countries such as Malaysia and Singapore.
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Summary Note.
* taken from
TheSage's English Dictionary and Thesaurus v. 1.4.0
