Artist: Exciter
Title: Death Machine
Type: Album
Label: Massacre Records

These Canadian Speed Metal legends return with a follow-up to 2008’s Thrash, Speed, Burn, which gained mixed reviews. They rightly stake their claim in metal history along with fellow countrymen Razor, as being one of the most underrated bands in the world. In fact, Canadian metal is legendary, but it never got the commercial success of the American bands (Sacrifice, Razor, Sword, Piledriver etc...), or the German bands for that matter (Deathrow, Warrant etc…). In terms of Exciter, people are always going to hark back to the line up that featured Dan Beehler, I suppose it is recognised as the classic period for the band. But things move on, and bands live and breathe without particular members. John Ricci on guitars is the sole survivor of the “classic” first three album period, but this does not mean that Exciter have gone downhill.

An immediate impression of ‘Death Machine’ is speed, their last album was a little hit and miss if the truth be told, but 90% of ‘Death Machine’ is fast and furious. The only negative I can hear is that the drum patterns are pretty much the same throughout the album (on the faster tunes anyway). The production sounds raw; dated if you will, but this perfectly represents Exciter’s need for speed and barrage of aggression. It does sound like the production of Whiplash’s ‘Thrashback’ album, for those whom don’t know Exciter. Kenny "Metal Mouth" Winter’s vocals are raspy and tough (also the current Fischel’s Beast vocalist) with no let up in the raging holocaust unleashed with every breath.

Hang around to the end of the album after ‘Skull Breaker’, a hidden track (my promo files are a different running order to what the CD listing is!) and you get Exciter’s ‘Eruption’ (Van Halen), guitar bashing and fretboard butchery, raw, vicious, fist raising! Tracks like ‘HellFire’, ‘Pray for Pain’ and ‘Dungeon Descendants’ are classic Exciter tempos and tunes. ‘Death Machine’ is not as amazing as I was expecting, although I had reservations following their last release, but it is a definite improvement on that album. The band have taken a classic period of their past, and replicated this in 2010. This is a cool album for speed, but it’s not a capable album for out of the ordinary different song arrangements, but then being Exciter, would you really want anything else but Speed Metal? \m/

http://www.myspace.com/exciterofficial
http://www.massacre-records.com/