Deathrow - Deception Ignored (1988)^{Release ID: 2620}

I’ve been wanting to revisit the 1989 third album from Teutonic thrashers Deathrow for many years now but seem to have been subconsciously procrastinating. I think the reason behind that stems back to a hang-up I had with “Deception Ignored” back in the day. It was the release that introduced me to Deathrow & I was becoming increasingly interested in your more technical extreme metal artists at the time so I was pretty open to indulging in its charms. To be fair, I did find it to be an enjoyable record too but there was always something that got in the way of me fully committing to “Deception Ignored” like so many of my peers were. I’ll save that for a little later in the review but I thought it was worth throwing that little disclaimer out there for why I might not have submitted a rating for such a widely celebrated thrash release up until now.

I think it’s fair to say that Deathrow’s first two albums were drastically different to “Deception Ignored”. They both took a much more traditional approach to Teutonic thrash & are closer in style to bands like Darkness, Vendetta & even Canada’s Sacrifice. Their 1987 sophomore record “Raging Steel” had seen the band starting to toy with a more sophisticated sound but it was nothing terribly extreme. “Deception Ignored”, however, saw Deathrow throwing themselves head over heals into an incredibly complex & progressive record that sat amongst the most ambitious releases the thrash scene had delivered to the time. The level of musicianship had been increased significantly & I’d imagine that even the band’s most diehard fans must have been surprised by what they heard.

This begs the question as to how this all came about now, doesn’t it? Well, it would come in the form of a lineup change to be specific. Guitarist Thomas Priebe had decided that life as a musician was not for him & had been replaced by the relatively unknown Uwe Osterlehner who, despite never having played in a band of this magnitude before, was extremely proficient at his instrument. Uwe played a major role in the writing process & the band tended to go along with the direction he wanted to take which resulted in a landmark release for the Teutonic thrash scene. Legendary German metal producer Harris Johns (who had already produced a slew of important releases such as Helloween’s self-titled E.P. & “Walls of Jericho” debut album, Kreator’s “Pleasure To Kill”, Sodom’s “Agent Orange” & Voivod’s “Killing Technology” & Dimension Hatross”) was once again responsible for the production duties & managed to nicely balance the raw electricity of Deathrow’s roots with the clarity required to pull off such technically challenging song structures so one would imagine that the band’s label Noise Records would have been thrilled with the outcome.

“Deception Ignored” is the very epitome of the technical thrash metal sound in that it never forgets where Deathrow came from but consistently explores highly progressive concepts in its composition. The guitar work in particular is stunning in its scope but the performances are never polished enough to leave you forgetting that the album has come from the Teutonic scene & that’s an element that I really appreciate in this record. The ripping guitar solos are right up my alley while drummer Markus Hahn sounds like he’s hanging on for dear life at times but he somehow manages to hold it all together which gives the album some added tension. Unfortunately this brings us to the major flaw that I mentioned earlier & it’s this component that single-handedly derails Deathrow’s chances of receiving a premium rating from me. Bassist Milo simply can’t sing this shit to save his life & that’s not me being overly harsh. I wasn’t the biggest fan of his inconsistent performance on “Raging Steel” but he’s reached an all new level of pitchiness here & it’s effectively nullified most of the great instrumental work (at least it has for me). Some people can’t tolerate Vio-lence’s Sean Killian or Exodus’ Paul Baloff but I’d comfortably take either of those gentlemen over this shit show any day of the week, particularly Milo’s higher-register squeally stuff which I find to be particularly grating.

All qualms aside, it’s hard to fault the tracklisting on “Deception Ignored” as every one of the eight tracks included offers a number of highly engaging instrumental passages. Some of them remind me quite a bit of classic Voivod which leaves me asking the question about Harris Johns’ involvement in the song-writing process given his contribution to some of the Canadian progressive metal legends’ finest work. The album actually starts in pretty solid fashion & halfway through my first revisit I was thinking that I might be on my way to a four-star rating off the back of high-quality efforts like opener “Events in Concealment” & lengthy instrumental “Triocton”. Unfortunately some of Milo’s poorer performances start to take their toll through the middle & back end of the tracklisting though with only the thrashier closer “Bureaucrazy” seeing things restored to their earlier promise.

So ultimately, “Deception Ignored” is a highly creative yet deeply flawed tech thrash record in my opinion. I’d take it over Deathrow’s 1986 debut album “Riders of Doom” but I give “Raging Steel” a slight edge over its more highly praised younger sibling these days. If you’re a diehard fan of tech thrash artists like Coroner, Realm or Аспид then you’ll probably want to see for yourself as there’s really not a lot of options in this space but I’m afraid I can’t say that I can justify the claims for “Deception Ignored” being an essential release with such an obvious vocal flaw.

Germans Deathrow finally emerged from their fellow countrymen Sodom and Kreator's shadow with this their third album, Deception Ignored, taking technical thrash to new levels with it's progressive tendencies. Now, unlike most, I don't consider this to really be a prog metal album, it is most definitely still a thrash album, but it is a busy sonofabitch, third track Triocton, for example, could almost be termed thrash-jazz it's has so much going on. The playing is exceptional, guitarists Sven Flügge and Uwe Osterlehner trading riffs and solos like a pair of world class heavyweights and the drumming is outstanding and never misses a beat, no matter what other technical trickery is going on. Milo Van Jaksic's vocals are pretty decent, more akin to Joey Belladonna than the usual thrash growls, but on a couple of occasions his voice does sound a bit strained.
Now I have no wish to paint this album as all technical jiggerypokery and lacking in the thrash department because believe me my friends, this still thrashes like a mutha. Seriously, check out The Deathwish, N.L.Y.H. or Watching the World and try telling me these guys don't know how to thrash as hard as anyone. I have seen a number of reviews calling this album dull and, in all honesty, I really don't know what kind of adrenaline junkie you'd have to be to find this boring. You may not like it but boring it certainly isn't. I am often underwhelmed by a lot of technical metal, but this is just so damn infectious that I found it's technicalities exhilharating instead of offputting. Probably my favourite tech-thrash album.