Surprisingly, Possessed ease up on the brutality this time and revert back to thrash/speed metal. I found this fascinating actually: the music is so similar yet one album sounds undeniably thrashy and the other is mostly death - is it possible to pinpoint what causes this? I can describe death as an overpowering emphasis on brutality rather than speed - although the speed is still there of course - and the guitars usually have more roar and bottom end distortion. Thrash has more of a rhythm emphasis or speed frenzy, delivered with scratchier guitars relatively. This can be debated a lot obviously, and some would add double-bass drums and throatier growls as death metal criteria, but these aren't crucial to the death sound in my opinion. The key is the looming brutality effect in death caused by different riffing styles, whereas I would describe thrash more as aggressive rather than brutal. But I have digressed into taxonomy again: Thrash this album is, and wonderfully so. Superb fretwork, changing from whirlwind riffs to mosh delights and always changing often enough to keep things interesting. The drumming complements the many changes well and the vocals now have a more whining, Celtic Frost quality to them. A fast and superb speed/thrash metal album, the low production notwithstanding, and highly recommended to fans of this genre.

© 1999 Zev Toledano
Original review posted at LARM!