Review by Rexorcist for Destruction - Infernal Overkill (1985)

It's obvious that the band was trying a little harder in the art department to keep things a little more sophisticated, especially from such a progressive intro track.  Much more interesting things are done with the hardcore-style riffs, finding clever ways to combine multiple repetitive riffs together for some grand new idea.  A very goo example of that is the middle-section to The Ritual, which found ways to be unpredictable despite its lacking progression of, ahem, different notes.  But this usually isn't the case.  There's still the filler aspect in which production and speed are the major factors.  For example, Death Trap just goes on for far too long.  It's got some damn good riffs, but it's a bit easy for these guys to draw out five minutes when their biggest concerns are speed and atmosphere.  And Tormentor sounds like a broken record until you get to the guitar solo.  Hell, the eight-minute closer, Black Death, is basically switching between the same two riffs throughout the run, managing to do less imaginitive things than the four-minute opener.  So in a way, it feels like they didn't really care about the fans enough to really write their own Stairway.  There are noticeable improvements in the production and a few of the riffs, so there's that, but the fact that they went from the three-minute songs to five minuts with little change in most instances is a little of an insult.

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