Review by Sonny for Messiah (CHE) - Choir of Horrors (1991)

During my dive into the early years of death metal during my Voyage of (Re-)Discovery project, I happened upon Messiah's debut, the 1986 album, Hymn to Abramelin. Well, that didn't go too well and it held little lasting appeal for me as I found it to be a bit of a mess, Messiah seeming like a band with more ideas than they could bring together successfully. So five years later and four years after their sophomore Extreme Cold Weather (which I haven't heard) they were back with Choir of Horrors. Now this is much more up my street as they seemed to have decided what they wanted to do and concentrated on doing that well rather than throwing everything at the wall and hoping something sticks. What they do very well is a thrashy kind of death metal that reminds me a lot of Poland's Vader whose debut appeared a year after Choir of Horrors. The band playing on Choir of Horrors are unrecognisable from the one that produced Hymn of Abremalin, having seriously tightened up all round, both playing and songwriting-wise, and this is actually a really punchy slab of thrash/death that should appeal to any nineties extreme metal-loving, right-thinking person. OK, you've heard plenty like it since, but in context I think it is a great example of early nineties death metal. Really good songs, great vocals, a solid rhythm section and neck-wrenching riffs that appeal more to the physical side of extreme metal than the cerebral, which is what i signed up for in the first place!

Don't you find it amazingly satisfying when a band you have written off as terrible or not your kind of thing then ram it back down your throat and prove you wrong? Messiah have certainly done that here and I will most definitely will be seeking a copy of this to listen to whilst I bite into my huge slice of humble pie!