HISTORY
This band might be one of Sweden’s few pure thrash-metal bands; the band was created during the eighties and became one of Sweden’s technical thrash bands. This band was called
Hexenhaus and they played a style similar to
Coroner (Though
Coroner was a few levels higher in their technical skills), this band is disbanded, the band has made a few reunions but most members are now members in other bands. Their first album
A Tribute To Insanity is probably their best album, the album showed very good signs of technical riffage and energy but the other upcoming albums was more of a big disappointment.
ALBUM INFORMATION
This review will be focusing on their first album, this album is called
A Tribute To Insanity and it was released in 1988. This album shows some typical but yet well-performed technical thrash-metal. The songs are pretty catchy, they are also pretty fast but the heaviness is though pretty ‘’light’’. The vocals are not a highlight in this album, though this vocal style is also pretty typical for thrash-metal but this time it was not as good as you could’ve hoped. This album does not have any special lyric messages in it, the lyric themes are based around stuff young kinds thought or thinks is cool, like occult stuff, bizarre stuff, violence and so on, there are no political or society directed themes.
Nick Johansson
This is the vocalist of this band, but I have to say that this thrash-metal singer was a bit of a disappointment. I have heard lots of strange vocalists that I both thought good and bad about; unfortunately this is one of the less good. The vocals are the same in every song, there are no signs of variety in the vocal work, and it is the same deal in every song. The vocals sounds pretty forced or strained, you can almost feel how he forces his vocals out; you can though here some lower vocal frequencies a little here and there but not often. This singer was not much to praise about so his overall performance will be a:
2.5/5 (Average)
Mike Wead /
Andreas Palm (Rick Meister)
This is the two guitarists of this band, probably the only good members alongside the drummer. We begin with the riffing sections; here we have a good amount of different and technical riffing and shredding. The riffs are most of the times quite catchy and easy to digest, they maybe suffer a lack of heaviness but it works quite well though. These guys can also handle some pretty good guitar solos, they do sound pretty ‘’new invented’’ and they are not highly complex either. But the solos are though a bit melodic from time to time but they are most of the times quite fast, high-pitched and somewhat chaotic. I think that these guys deserves a good rating and they will be given a:
4.5/5 (Superb)
Jan ‘’Blomman’’ Blomquist
This is probably one of the most overshadowed members in this album, this is the bassist of this band and this is what I have to say about this member. Poor! Then I don’t mean that he is a guy with poor skills but you can’t hear his bass, maybe one or two, perhaps three times you can notice the bass. If you have very high volume on your stereo you might be able to hear the bass lines, but otherwise you can’t hear them well. I can just assume that he goes along the rhythm sections but there are definitely no standout performances from the bassist. But I still think that he makes a quite decent performance and he will be given a:
3/5 (Good)
Ralph Raideen
He is the drummer in this album, and as I said before, this is the second member to deliver a better overall musical performance. This type of thrash-drumming is not highly advanced, but it still has some classic thrash patterns. The catchiness in the patterns is pretty good, the beats are somewhat heavy and the tempos are fast. I think that most people would accept this type of drumming instead of maniac drumming that you can find in bands like
Dark Angel or
Kreator. I think that this was okay drumming and this member will be given a:
3.5/5 (Great)
MY CONCLUSION
I thought that this album was pretty good, but it didn’t escape my final judgement. Some things I liked about this album were the technical material, it was catchy and the variety was very good, you have many different riffs and shredds and many of them were enjoyable. The album didn’t have this full assault approach that some bands have, this was a very easy digested album. Some things I didn’t like so much was the echoing vocals, the ‘’flat’’ and un-heavy sound and the huge lack of bass tunes. But, I got tired of the album pretty quick but I still think that this is a good album; but I would recommend this album to thrashers and heavy-metal fans. As you can see I have only focused on the band members and their overall performances, I have used this format before so I thought I could try it out now once again. I hope this was a good guidance and you are very welcome to give me your comments.
RECOMMENDED TRACKS
-- Delirious
-- Eaten Alive
-- Momento Moris – The Dead Are Restless
This album will be given a 3/5 (or a 2.7/5 to be more accurate) for its energetic and overall technical material.
