Review by Sonny for Death Angel - The Ultra-Violence (1987)

I clearly remember coming home late one Friday night and turning on the TV to watch a metal show that was showing on the UK's Channel Four back then, catching the video to Voracious Souls and being completely blown away. I subsequently managed to track down The Ultraviolence and it quickly became one of my favourite thrash albums with not a single dud track in my opinion. It's amazing to think that DA were still teenagers when they recorded it (drummer Andy Galeon was just 15).

The squealing intro to Thrashers kicks us off in supercharged style with a breakneck celebration of thrash itself and we never need to look back from thereon in as one frantic riff after another is torn off. I know vocalist Mark Osegueda isn't to everyone's taste, being a bit high-pitched for some, but I personally think his singing is perfectly fine. The riffs are dynamic and uncompromising, particularly the aforementioned Voracious Souls and the solos are searingly hot laser beams of sound, so what more do you want from an 80s thrash album?

Sadly, Death Angel were never this good again, but the vast majority of metal bands don't even get close to making one album this brilliant, so I'll settle for that.