Jurassic Jade - Never Forget Those Days (1991)^{Release ID: 38288}

It's no surprise that international countries wanted a piece of some serious metal action.  Japan certainly loves their metal, and it's also no surprise that one of the more obscure ones would take the visual aspect into account by wearing corpse paint resembling kabuki make-up (or vise-versa?)  But did this really help the music?  NO!  Why would it?  Even after having heard their debut Gore, it's obvious that these guys are nothing more than just another thrash band.

I'm gonna keep this review simple for a good reason: Never Forget Those Days is a simple album.  Even though it's a fast and furious album, there was very little brainpower put into the writing, so it just feels like another garage band from Bandcamp.com.  Ironic; with titles like "The Warholic" and "Sayonara Suicide," you'd expect a very evil presence to plague this album the way it does the average Slayer release.  But no, the whole album feels like underdeveloped basic thrash that's trying to follow in the footsteps of the preceding album.  One of the pros of this underwritten album is that some songs like "Mere Anarchy" and the title track prove that these guys can play pretty damn fast without sacrificing too much rhythm.  And it's a suitable album for fans of crossover thrash or powerviolence since the production is more punk-oriented and the singer is doing more shouting than actual singing.

Fortunately, there are some moments where the band tries to take guitar "effects" and atmosphere into account, notably during the lengthy ending of "Kuroi Dōwa" where the guitars are going for a mix of white noise and space travel, so even though it wasn't an amazing solo by any means, it was one of the better and more original parts of this monotonous album.  And "Kindan Shojo" starts with some very dark moaning before going into a creepy and slow-moving metal piece with female orchestral vocals bringing out the mood.  So that really helped make the album less tiring.  But this doesn't always work.  Their attempt at a classic blues song with "Iyada" sucks.  It feels like a crappy bootleg demo from a different band.  And by the time the album ends, we just get a cheap and fairly dark instrumentation with some obnoxious group screaming that sounds completely fake.

I wouldn't recommend this album for anyone.  It's cheaply made and offers nothing new.  To be fair I found myself getting more annoyed by the album than anything.  These guys are pretty much only decent at the absolutel basics, and their efforts to expand their technique hurts as much as it helps.  Comparing this to their OK debut, Gore, helped bring a more accurate outlook on this one.  Gore isn't worth listening to, but it's still better than this.