February 2022 Feature Release – The Pit Edition
So just like that we find that a new month is upon us which of course means that we’ll be nominating a brand new monthly feature release for each clan. This essentially means that we’re asking you to rate, review & discuss our chosen features for no other reason than because we enjoy the process & banter. We’re really looking forward to hearing your thoughts on our chosen releases so don’t be shy.
This month’s feature release for The Pit has been nominated by yours truly. It's the seriously underrated 1994 debut album "D.E.S.T.I.T.U.T.I.O.N." from Aussie thrash metal legends Allegiance. If you think you know everything there is to know about Aussie thrash because you have a couple of Mortal Sin & Hobbs Angel of Death records lying around in the back of your garage then think again. Allegiance were absolutely worshipped in the local scene over here during the 1990's & made a habit of matching or surpassing every international act that passed through our shores for several years. You can expect a wonderfully mature brand of thrash that pays homage to the greats of the genre while also treading it's own path thanks to a seriously talented frontman & a classy group of experience instrumentalists. Get on it guys!
https://metal.academy/releases/13694
Several of you have expressed feelings of nostalgia at having revisited this month's Chevelle feature release. I was previously unfamiliar with that particular album however this one sits very much in that nostalgic space for me personally as some of these songs have left permanent marks on my youth & bring back a multitude of memories of being an active member of the Aussie extreme metal scene in the early -to-mid 1990's. Despite the fact that Allegiance were from Perth, they didn't mind travelling & picked up several big name national support slots so I was lucky enough to see them live on numerous occasions. Boy, they were a great live band too & I feel that this album is made more appealing by my recollections of those live experiences to be honest. Conrad Higson is a very talented & charismatic front man & all of the instrumentalists are first class & obviously fairly experienced performers which gives Allegiance an edge over much of what was going on around them at the time. They just seemed to get it if you know what I mean.
"D.E.S.T.I.T.U.T.I.O.N" doesn't do much different to what the Americans were doing in the late 1980's & early 1990's but it matches the majority of them for class & consistency. Names like Metallica, Exodus, Anthrax, Sacred Reich, Slayer & Sepultura often spring to mind while experiencing the truck load of fantastic riffs on offer here & they're further enhanced by some really intelligent arrangements. I have to admit that I'm not much of a fan of the sporadically used death metal vocals which come across like a poor man's Karl Willetts from Bolt Thrower. The occasional blast beat is more successful in its execution though & adds a nice differentiator from your standard Bay Area fodder. The lead guitar solos are wonderfully executed & are a definite highlight as they often elevate the song-writing to new levels & help to create wonderful transitions & climaxes. If only Allegiance had been able to more consistently maintain the impressive level of song-writing that made "Chaos Ends" & "Morally Justified" such classics for an 18 year-old me. There are no weak tracks per se but there's a definite gap between the best material & the filler. Regardless, this is possibly the best Aussie thrash release of the 1990's & it's when looking at releases like this one that you can see the major holes in the coverage of a site like RateYourMusic which only has 44 ratings for this record 28 years later.
4/5
Let me start off by noting there is promise here. That promise is not fully recognised though. There are a couple of reasons for this. Firstly, although they complement the intense riffing and drumming, I do not find much about the vocals that pleases me. Adopting a throaty gruffness that lacks any of the shrieking tendencies of a Joey Belladonna, whilst being a good bedfellow for the music, makes for a largely flat outing over ten tracks (two of the twelve on the album are instrumentals) and the album for me is rescued by the excellent guitar riffing and lead work. The drumming acts as a solid constant backdrop to the album. Whilst not technically outstanding, it is memorable for its consistency if nothing else.
Secondly, the elements of variation (including those pointless death metal growls) are not frequent enough to make the album all that interesting. The groovy riff to Torn Between Two Worlds is soon lost in the all too familiar intensity of the main thrash sound of the album and as such the album never fully explores these nuances in sound beyond more than fleeting dashes of difference. In some ways it is its own worst enemy for trying to stay so true to what it sets out to do.
A younger me might gloss over this and simply admire the record for its doggedness and determination. The fact is though that I just find this album as being more of a lost opportunity and one that just never truly embraces its own potential. Nothing sticks with me much barring the piano instrumental that closes proceedings which I am nearly sure is not what Allegiance intended.
3.5/5
Released in 1994, Allegiance's debut was a bit late to the thrash metal party. By then the binmen were carting the empty bottles away and cleaners were mopping the pools of puke up from the moshpit floor. There was an explosion of exciting and blasphemous new shit coming from the icy wastes of Scandinavia and doom was spreading over the world. To release a debut of pretty standard sounding, albeit fairly well done, Bay Area worship at this point in time meant that Allegiance were never likely to make much of a splash beyond their own shores and prove the old adage that "timing is everything".
The album's temporal misfortunes aside, it is very well done and all involved are impressively competent musicians. The vocalist, for the most part, seems to utilise the intonations of Hetfield and Chuck Billy for that authentic Bay Area sound and the rhythm section is solid. It is the guitar work that makes this worth listening to however with some cool riffing and impressively executed guitar leads.
On the downside there are of course the sparsely used, but ridiculously out-of-place death growls which I'm surprised they stuck with because they sound so jarring in this context. Furthermore, I'm sorry to say that the songwriting didn't exactly overwhelm me either. Although each track is well perforrmed and is inherently fine, I didn't feel as if anything jumped out and grabbed me by the throat and at album's end I struggled to recall anything truly killer.
If it had been released six or seven years earlier it may have been able to stand proudly alongside second-rung stuff like Exodus, but even the titans of thrash were disintegrating into mediocrity or reaching beyond the genre's borders at this point in time, so D.e.s.t.i.t.u.t.i.o.n was always destined for relative obscurity it seems. I would love to be able to claim it is some kind of undiscovered and ill-ignored gem, but in truth I found it to be well-executed but unexceptional Bay Area worship that would struggle to find much purchase outside that scene's most ardent devotees.
3.5/5