Review by Rexorcist for Vio-Lence - Eternal Nightmare (1988)

After hearing the band's two early demos, I still didn't have much of an inkling as to their true abilities because the recording quality, demo or not, was terrible for the first demo and slightly better for the second.  With this one, they got a real producer to handle the sound quality, which maximizes everything they're capable of.  Thing is, while these guys are still stylistically generic, not really standing out with a style of their own, theycan sure jam like fuck and play at Star Trek levels of warp speed.  Much of the frontal work is done by later Machine Head guitarist Robb Flynn, who totally understand what thrash power and riffage needs to sound like.  For the most part, the rest of the instrumentalists aren't really struggling to keep up with him at all.  They match his power pretty easily, which is incredible considering that the single hiring of one different person would almost send this album toppling.  Of course, that's as far as the instrumentation goes.  Although this is a perfectly produced album with song great songwriting, I'm really not digging Sean Killian's vocals.  Not only is he joining the chained-to-a-wall kink train of thinking shouting the same way through a whole album is somehow the coolest thing you can do, but it sounds like he's in the wrong genre.  He sounds like he belongs in a power metal band or a Queensryche knockoff, like he's adjusting his voice for thrash to hide this and failing.  As well, with half these songs sharing very similar tempos and practically all of them bearing the same vibe, they don't really push any boundaries beyond raw instrumentality.  As well, some of the songs drag on much longer than they likely need to, largely because the album's mostly an exercize in showing off both instrumental and production techniques rather than an example of depth.  So I think it's right that I give this a good rating for some incredible strengths, but from a broader perspective, it's not the most enlightening... just addictingly thrashy.

83