Artillery - Fear of Tomorrow (1985)^{Release ID: 1456}

I came to Artillery late in proceedings. With Terror Squad and the classic By Inheritance already in my collection, I thought I should go back and see what their debut release was like. Considering it came out way back 1985 when thrash was in its infancy (some sort of devil child?), I figured it would be a badly produced album and one that didn't stand up all that well next to those albums. That hasn't turned out to be the case at all and I feel a bit silly for not checking this out earlier.

It's classic Artillery really! Good, solid thrash riffs are combined with Flemming Ronsdorf's easily recognisable power metal style vocals. His vocals are a bit strange when you first hear them, but they grew on me quick enough and now I quite enjoy them. Unfortunately, on this album, the lyrics are rather contrived and naively simple. They cover the standard topics of religion and the human races destructive nature, but the rhyming structures sound like they were written by a 12-year-old.

But Fear of Tomorrow is just as good as Terror Squad in my opinion. The leads are adequate, but it's the consistency of the riffs that make the album so entertaining. It's a rather heavy release for 1985 and has several great tracks such as Time Has Come, Out of the Sky and Deeds of Darkness. It's still surprising to me that I knew nothing of Artillery until the last 12 months, being that I've been a huge fan of thrash metal for 20 years. I guess I have Rate Your Music to thank for bringing this underrated Danish band to my attention.