Total Destruction Revisited

Destruction "Death Trap"
Destruction "Unconscious Ruins"
Destruction "Deposition (Your Heads Will Roll)"

Mostly notable ‘round these parts for a handful of mid-80s electroshock recordings sluiced out for a variety of low-budget thrash-n-bash record labels deemed insignificant by the majors, Teutonic thrashmasters Destruction are part of an unholy Germanic metal trinity that includes Sodom and Kreator as its other points of light. Although not as well known stateside as their Kraut-guzzling teammates, Destruction began the Reagan decade with much promise and ended it by not-so-gracefully self-destructing at the dawn of grunge, a self-fulfilling promise if there ever was one....

After numerous line-up changes revolving like some odd moon of Saturn around axemaster Mike Sifringer, the band’s “creative output” during the decade of the ‘90s was mostly ignored by all but the most thick-skulled of true believers, whilst everybody else listening to music had traded in their studded leather jackets for dirty flannel and heroin. Seeing the writing on the wall (and wanting to live long enough to collect enough green stamps to ensure some sort of retirement comfort), Sifringer invited beloved original Destruction vocalist Schmier back into the fold in time to celebrate the new millennium. Like much of Russian history, those discs made without the charismatic vocalist Schmier, wretched they may be, have been demoted in status and removed from the band’s “official discography.”

Since 2000, the “new,” improved Destruction has attempted to redeem themselves for previous roadbumps and potholes with firestarter albums like 2005’s Inventor Of Evil. The task has only been partially successful, but Thrash Anthems promises to kiss and make up with the smallish legion of former fans still unconvinced of the band’s sincerity. The premise is simple, as Testament proved a couple of years back – venture barefoot into the nearest studio and re-record your classic old sides with a modern edge, etc, just to prove how ultra-groovy you were back in the day.

In the case of Thrash Anthems, the hocus-pocus works. Afforded a recording budget larger than a breadbox but smaller than a Volvo, Destruction proceeds to kick the living crap out of these thrash antiquities. The album delivers the real goods: high-decibel buzzsaw schadenfreude that wears its world-weary misanthropy on its sleeve while reveling in its suicidal worldview. That many of these tunes were originally scribbled on the back of boulders back when the mastodons died is irrelevant – shorn of their lo-fi roots, crunchy cuts like “Death Trap,” “Mad Butcher” and “Curse The Gods” flex plenty of muscle.

Never the most subtle of hog-farmers to rise up from the metal underground, Destruction nevertheless had better chops than most, guitarslinger Sifringer toasting the tones with the best of the whole stinking lot of ‘em, even throwing in a little wiry Spanish dancer classical riffing into the intro of the epic “Unconscious Ruins.” Vocalist Schmier gargles with battery acid and Lemon Pledge to better slur his Germanic approximation of the English language while drummer Marc Reign just does his best to slag out a wall-of-bombast behind his energetic bandmates.

If the idea of a dino-thrash band revisiting its back catalog doesn’t capture your imagination the same way as, say, a teenage Russian gymnast might, the fines folks of Destruction throw a bone towards modern marketing technique by starting and finishing Thrash Anthems with new recordings that sound remarkably similar to their old recordings, i.e. all balls and black leather flash. Much like an over-the-hill ballplayer mainlining chemicals that would send a lab rat into fits of manic depression, Destruction continues to peel the plaster from the studio walls with the band’s own individual blend of harder-louder-faster-thrash-metal and blustery, hard-chromed charm. Turn it up! (Candlelight Records)

(Click on the CD cover to buy Thrash Anthems from Amazon.com)