Review by UnhinderedbyTalent for Infernäl Mäjesty - None Shall Defy (1987)

Canadians Infernäl Mäjesty operate in the zone of thrash metal that is rabid and putrid without necessarily dropping into blackened territory.  Their debut album is a pretty fucking intense experience, even for a hardened thrash metal veteran like me.  It is reminiscent of Possessed in terms of the death metal like intensity it generates, but also Slayer as a reference point for how true the thrash credentials are at the same time.

The album suffers an oddity in terms of structure early on with an instrumental track immediately after the opening song.  This loses a lot of momentum from the album in all honesty and despite the big build up that goes on during track 3, Night of the Living Dead puts things back on course more from an atmosphere perspective as opposed to reasserting the intensity levels immediately.  This is a strange choice of running order - even though it is obvious to see the link with the instrumental as an intro to the horror themed track mentioned above - and one that overall I do not think the record recovers from overall.  The feeling of things being a little disjointed thereafter is not entirely shook off at any point, despite the obvious distraction of the thunderous racket that occupies most of the album.

This does not make None Shall Defy a bad album by any means.  It is clearly made by a group of young people with all the morbid fascinations of horror, comics and serial killers that you would perhaps expect from the stereotype of thrash metal bands at the time.  These dark curiosities transpose well into song writing content and provide the necessary dank sound to the frantic tempos as a reminder that whatever we are racing through there is something vile not too far away, permeating the air with its corrosive odour.

At times it does feel like a much slower version of Slayer as opposed to others where they seem to match the mad thrashing intensity of the aforementioned stars of the genre.  Vocalist Chris Bailey does remind me of Tom Araya a lot, and the looping sonics of Steve Terror (yep, I know!) and Kenny Hallman are certainly not a football field away from Hanneman and King.  I don't think drummer Rick Nemes quite matches Lombardo in the skill stakes but he still does a great job of bashing his way through the record.

Terrible artwork aside, None Shall Defy is a great old-school thrash metal record that is probably criminally overlooked by most fans of the genre.