Imagine my excitement when I received through the post a mysterious package containing a CD with a photocopied label – I thought I must have stumbled onto something true, something underground and obscure. Well, it seems I was mostly right – what the gods of metal had delivered unto me was a promotional copy of the debut album from Ohio-based metal warriors Inner Terror! This is no fledgling band however; these guys have been cranking it out deep in the underground since the mid eighties, as the fantastically-named Axemaster. It seems with one or two new members, the band decided to modernise their sound somewhat, and thus changed their name – as it states on the notes also contained on the CD.
How exactly they have made their sound more modern I haven’t determined! The album has a lot of the hallmarks of an eighties heavy metal album – a very mid-range guitar sound, a lot of echo on the vocals and a huge amount of theatricality. After the ominous album intro, complete with background guitar twiddling and sinister noises – the first song starts with a clean passage that sounds remarkably like something from a classic Slayer album; slow, sinister and dramatic. It also reminds me slightly of the clean part in `Night Crawler’ by Judas Priest... Later on in the same song, vocalist Dan Kaisk bellows `Behold!’ with an incredibly dated sounding effect on his vocals – totally reminiscent of the film `The Exorcist’! Anyway, I’m sure you get the point – this album does not sound modern in any sense as far as I can see!
What you will discover though, is a seriously theatrical metal album – you can almost smell the greasepaint, as Dan and his metal cohorts thrash and bash their way through the twelve songs. Every song is peppered with dramatic moments, snarling declarations, liberal use of reverb on the vocals, the odd church bell, and over-the-top guitar solos; they remind me on occasion of a low-budget Manowar. Dan Kaisk’s voice in particular has that snarling `stage villain’ quality that Joey DeMaio often uses, but he is not simply a copy.
There are some really great ingredients in the music on this album – the band have a large dose of eighties thrash in their writing; a lot of the riffs have a satisfyingly heavy crunch, and the solos are enjoyably nasty – rather like Slayer’s early songs, or some of the chaotic solos on the classic Mercyful Fate albums. Inner Terror are great at building up songs to a truly dramatic crescendo which has me dusting off my old Megadeth tapes (remember them?), and some of the slower, more doom laden moments are pure Candlemass in my opinion. The band also like using some rather progressive song structures which definitely makes for interesting listening.
Where this album falls down for me, is that too many of the songs are a rather plodding mid-paced speed, which has my attention waning – this is a real shame as there are a whole lot of great metal moments which end up being missed! I would urge any fan of classic metal or eighties thrash to give this album a chance, it is a grower without a doubt.
http://www.myspace.com/theinnerterror
