Review by Rexorcist for Vio-Lence - Oppressing the Masses (1990)

So the first one was a good one that had some great, if not almost perfect, things about it, but some major creative bumps.  The most notable of these bumps was how most of these songs were pretty much doing the same thing, which meant creativity was at a low point.  very little differentiation betweem tempo, vibe and emotion.  Well, it still managed to be a highly spirited, thrashy and purely metallic experience.  This album feels like a nerfed version of everything that made the debut so good.  Everything's palatable.  There's still a good chunk of the spirit there.  Obviously, that hasn't left.  But the riffs are only pretty good as opposed to the wonderfully wild astuff we got before.  At first, the album's charm is cool, but it goes on that way for five of the eight tracks, tempo, vibe and everything, and the only thing that changes about track 6 is the tempo, and then we go RIGHT BACK TO THE SAME STUFF on track 7, and by that point it just gets old.  It will appeal to thrash fans for its spirit, but otherwise, it's an insult to the majesty of what makes thrash so grandios, being nothing more than a Malt-O-Meal variant of a better cereal.

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