Artist: Exciter
Label: Massacre Records
Release: 2008
Running time: 45:38
Rating: 4/5
Exciter are legendary Canadian thrash/speed metallers, and their first three albums are the real pioneering ABC of that corner of heavy metal! After eight years that flew by at breakneck speed since “Blood Of Tyrants” (2000), their new album has finally arrived! “Thrash Speed Burn”, as the thing is called, says it straight up: Exciter stay true to their roots, and even after exactly 30 years of existence, they have no intention of getting out of the saddle and slowing down the top gear of their famous extreme heavy metal gallop.
Over the years, people have come and gone in Exciter. Only one name has always stayed the same. John Ricci. The relentless, unbridled guitarist keeps Exciter standing all the way through! “Thrash Speed Burn” is the new Exciter monument, one that bites, kicks, tears and roars without letting up, with all the extreme aggression that heavy metal in its primordial form is capable of producing in the first place. The guys aren’t exactly spring chickens, but they’re not mellowing out. Okay, I’m lying. The arrival of Kenny Winter on vocals and Rob “Clammy” Cohen on bass has definitely made the band younger. It’s an excellent combo for Ricci and drummer Rik Cherron in this case. Winter is a perfectly adequate new singer for the band, easily filling the shoes of Jacques Belanger or the “great” Beehler. Cohen is a wild beast who can hardly wait for noise to become his alibi for bass rattling. So, fresh blood hungry to prove itself in the band!
So what is it, once again, that makes “Thrash Speed Burn” a downright fascinating and uniquely recognizable new Exciter album? Playing “one-two-three-four,” no calculations in between. Being loud and fast beyond all limits at the same time. The foundation of it all is, of course, a simple but utterly penetrating guitar phrase, and luckily John Ricci’s noggin is never short of them. The riffs are “exciterized,” so to speak: simple, carrying that direct invasiveness that hypnotically and irresistibly drags you into a wild orgy of breaking necks and limbs. On “Thrash Speed Burn” too, everything is cut from a single (compositionally creative) frequency of metal, confined within the narrow creative-existential range of typical music specialists who handle the moment of musical experimentation very poorly, or rather, can’t stand it at all in their musical expression.
This is the first Exciter album recorded digitally, yet it hasn’t lost the trademark extreme production rawness, which once again presents the band as if they were playing a real gig in the studio. Over the course of the album you’ll find yourself wrapped in the famous thick blanket of the extreme sonic wall of Ricci’s guitar riffs, nobly “thrashing” and possessed, with which the guitarist venomously feeds the songs as if he were holding a “Schmeisser” and not a guitar. Add the devastating pounding of Rik Cherron, with his typical, fascinating weaving of double bass drum pedals into aggressive transitions, and another victorious step for Exciter is guaranteed.
The riffs of the new songs sound fresh and untamed. With the new album, Exciter keep carrying on the formula of “Blood Of Tyrants.” Their freshness comes from Ricci’s genius for how, even after 30 years, to pull out a riff that in its very essence effectively disarms the listener the first moment they face it. The songs Massacre Mountain, Thrash Speed Burn, In Mortal Fear (with one of the album’s most striking riffs), Crucifixtion (almost six and a half minutes long, which for Exctiter is already a proper epic suite), Demon’s Eye, Hangman, Evil Omen,… don’t let up in the intensity of the extreme metal ride and proudly radiate the huge charisma of this band! The hypnotically punchy choruses are often decked out with lower-pitched gang shouts that cut into Winter’s confidently high-flying vocals, with which the guy, in extreme upper registers, literally slaughters the stars out of the sky.
It’s a wonderful feeling when an album by a legendary band lands in front of you, a band that even after three decades of the craft can still deliver an album that sounds youthful, hungry to prove itself, unburdened, honest and, most importantly: unique and one of a kind! Exciter play on it fiercely and relentlessly, as if it were the last day of the human era!
Lineup
Kenny “MetalMouth” Winter – vocals
John Ricci – guitar
Rob “Clammy” Cohen – bass
Rik Charron – drums
Production
Charles Fairfield & Exciter
Track list
1. Massacre Mountain
2. Thrash Speed Burn
3. In Mortal Fear
4. Crucifixion
5. Demon’s Gate
6. Hangman
7. Evil Omen
8. Betrayal
9. The Punisher
10. Rot The Devil King
