Back in the 80's warriors like Razor, Sacrifice and Slaughter reigned supreme and were at the front of the Canadian metal scene releasing some the most bad ass thrash metal imaginable. Slaughter in particular stands out more so for me since the band straddled the borders between extreme thrash and the early pioneering death metal sound. In fact, in 1986 Death's own Chuck "Evil" Schuldiner had a rehearsal with Slaughter, which proves that Florida wasn't the only place where death metal was being created.
The bands one and only record, 1987's, 'Strappado' is a record of legendary status, which has been re-released many times as well various compilations of demos, rehearsals and old live shows have also appeared in the past ten years. This particular version of the album I'm reviewing is the 25th anniversary edition, which is a 2CD set that includes both the LP and CD versions of Strappado (different running order plus additional songs on CD ver.) and live material from a show in '86 on disc one and on the second disc the, 'Meatcleaver', 'Bloody Karnage' and 'Surrender or Die' demo tapes, which makes a total of 55 songs and nearly three hours of music.
Recorded in February of '86, although not released until sometime in '87, 'Strappado' is a masterpiece of ripping thrashy early pioneering death metal played with a Celtic Frost and almost punk-ish sort of vibe, which although similar at times to South American bands like Sepultura, Sarcofago and Pentagram this one was conceived before all of those bands demos/albums and is generally faster and more barbarous too. The music itself is sort of simple, generally a single riff repeated several times over loud pounding drums and gruff shouted vocals and somewhat corny but fun lyrics with a totally underground production. What makes it really stand out is the music is quite fast, crazy and absolutely extreme for its time. There's barely any technical wizardry on display here, there's no face melting solos and all of the songs are fairly short too, but its just simply early youthful, maniacal, energetic extreme noise at its finest and as always I love stuff like this. There's just something about these crunchy raw riffs, insane vocals and the vicious hammering of the drums that I can't seem to get enough of!
The live songs, which close out the first disc of this set are as expected quite raw and full of emotion and from the sounds of things a totally crazy crowd too. Apparently Slaughter only played something like 15 shows during their lifespan and it seems the lack of shows just brought out more maniacs when they did perform. Nevertheless bootlegged live material is usually hit or miss with most people, but hearing these live cuts is always a fun way to experience these great songs.
The second disc kicks off with the, 'Meatcleaver' demo from August 31st, 1984. To me it sounds almost more like a rehearsal tape rather than an official demo due to the lo-fi and raw sound. Here the music is even more simple, not as fast and with a more obvious punk sound showing through, especially in the vocals. For the most part this demo is pretty goddamn funny to listen to, especially the title track, which has completely hilarious rhyming lyrics and in a funny sort of way it reminds me of these recordings my brother and I did when we were in our early teens. Basically we sang over rock/metal songs and added ridiculous parody lyrics and such, but that was probably just a result of listening to Weird Al too much from years earlier.
The 'Bloody Karnage' demo from December 31st 1984 follows and the months apart from these two demos shows some serious progression. The music is still quite raw and rehearsal with a thin drum and guitar sound, but the music is a lot faster and the seeds of what would become are starting to grow on this demo. Finally the, 'Surrender or Die' demo from April 1985 shows a Slaughter that's most comparable to what would soon be found on the full-length. The production is probably a little more crude here, but the compositions are spot on and this demo also offers a few songs that wouldn't be re-recorded, such as, 'Shadow of Death,' 'Eve of Darkness,' 'Cult of the Dead' and a cover of Hellhammer's, 'Massacra.'
Slaughter themselves would eventually break up in the late 80's, citing annoyance with the music business as the reason, although the band briefly reformed in the early 90's under the name Strappado and again in '94, another brief reunion as Slaughter the band recorded a Celtic Frost cover for the, 'In Memory of...' tribute CD. Bobby and Dave would also go on to play in a band named Inner Thought that had a few albums in the early to mid 90's and other than Dave's guest vocals on a recent Sacrifice record everyone else from the band has been done with music for many years now.
Many great bands came and went in the 80's, some just a few demos or some like Slaughter, which recorded a landmark early pioneering record of metal extremeness. 'Strappado' is surely an album that should be in every old school metal fanatics collection and with this ultimate edition now available you have no reason not too.
"1, 2, Fuck You!"
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