Review by Ben for Heathen - Victims of Deception (1991)

Before hearing this album, I'd only listened to Heathen's previous outing Breaking the Silence. While I didn't find anything amazing on that release, I found it to be decent enough thrash metal. Despite my lukewarm reaction to that album, I thought I'd check out Victims of Deception due to incredibly high rating on this site. After all, any album averaging over 4.00 with 186 votes simply must be a metal classic! Well...I'm stunned! This album isn't terrible, but it's not a classic, that's for sure.

The drumming is adequate if uninteresting, the vocals are ordinary, the lyrics are corny and contrived. The tracks are often overlong with most venturing well past the 6-minute mark. The only thing that saves the album at all is an occasional good riff or lead. The guitarists can clearly play, there's no doubt about that. Some of the solos are technically great. But the song structures rarely excite me and every now and then, make me cringe.

There seem to be several reviews comparing Victims of Deception to Metallica's late 80s period. They are similar in that they produce lightweight thrash metal with some great guitar work, but Heathen have nowhere near the song writing capability of that band, nor a vocalist capable of taking these tracks to a higher level. I'm going to slot this in the hugely overrated basket alongside Sabbat, Exodus and Nuclear Assault.