Review Summary: An album worthy of a listen for any Nuclear Assault fan.
Recorded in one of the bands most creative time periods, Nuclear Assault's second studio album refined their sound. The album expands on the crossover thrash found on "Game Over" with the band growing musically. Fast punk influenced thrash is what one can expect from this album. This album predated their best effort "Handle With Care", and one can hear the musical maturity taking place within the band.
At just over 30 minutes, the album is a rather short listen. Fast and short songs are abundant, as Nuclear Assault blasts through this record. The opening track, "Rise From the ashes" starts off with a riff followed by the rest of the band, building up to the very cool main riff of the song. The tracks follow your basic thrash metal song structure, with little innovation. But what it lack in innovation, it makes up for in raw aggression and straight forward thrash. Scathing, aggressive, and mosh inducing heavy tracks include "Brainwashed" "Survive" and "Great Depression". This album is best served to those who like their thrash straight up and old school. The only exception to this being the more slower and sometimes melodic "Fight To Be Free". However there are some issues that i did find with the song structure. A few of the songs are more or less filler tracks. You have the pointless and short "Got Another Quarter" and "PSA". These tracks merely take up time on the album and drag down the rest of the songs. The album may be aggressive, but it lacks direction, with many of the songs dragging on repetitively. It's not a very cohesive effort, with some tracks not molding well together.
The band plays their instruments well, with some very nice drumming from Glenn Evans. The guitars are never lacking or never let up, though some tracks like "F#" and "Wired" drag on endlessly. The Bass stands out and sounds really heavy and crunchy, which i did like. The one biggest issue i have with this record is the very annoying voice from John Connely. I'm not adverse to thrash vocalists being unique in their own rights, but this guy damn near made my ears bleed on track such as "Wired" and "Equal Rights". In later releases he uses his voice to a better affect with the music, but hear it sounds utterly terrible mediocre and annoying at best.
This album showed what the band was capable of, and was a precursor to the fantastic "Handle With Care". Despite the bad vocals, the band plays their instruments skillfully and showed a good bit of creativity in their song writing. However for the uninitiated, i would rather recommend "Handle With Care" any day. This album isn't terrible, but i would only recommend it for serious thrash fans or fans of this band.
RECOMMENDED TRACKS:
- Rise From the Ashes
- Brainwashed
- Survive
- Fight To Be Free
CREDITS:
John Connelly - vocals, guitar
Anthony Bramante - guitar
Danny Lilker - bass
Glenn Evans - drums
Produced by: Rand Burns, Matt Frieman, Miles Copeland
Engineered by: Casey McMakin
Recorded: January-February, 1988
Released: June 13, 1988
Labels: Relativity Records, Under One Flag, I.R.S. Records
