Detente
Recognize No Authority

Heavy Metal is the quintessential male music genre. Now, it's not that women are discriminated against (I take this opportunity to make an appeal to all those who would like to get closer to it to contact me via webcam, strictly in a bikini), but to have "le physique du role," let's be honest, a certain predisposition to vulgarity and indelicacy is necessary, a sense of cleanliness comparable to that of a Sardinian boar, an art of sloppiness always a prerogative of the masculine metalhead.

Only in relatively recent times has there been an emancipation of the female figure, garnering over the years a certain attention, even in terms of aesthetic perception (a hyper-pumped and excessively polished Eric Adams can never compete, in this world of Bunga-Bunga and Robacuori, with an Anneke Van Giersbergen, even if she were completely unmade-up and shabby), although it still represents an insignificant percentage in the entire global panorama: Lee Aaron, Lita Ford, Doro in the classic sphere, Lori Bravo (Nuclear Death), Nicole Lee (Znowhite), and Katherine Thomas (The Great Cat) in the more brutal one, just to mention the pioneering examples. I opted for this (un)necessary preface only to introduce you to Détente, a Los Angeles band that had, among its ranks, or rather behind the microphone, indeed a woman, Dawn Crosby, a sort of John Connelly without balls (anatomically speaking).

In the series "I make a record and then disappear from circulation," after Powermad, here is served to you another "monovular" band that in 1986 gave birth to "Recognize No Authority," a raw, direct, ignorant Thrash Metal disc only to vanish from the scenes and ultimately disband with the death, due to alcohol abuse, of Crosby; and it is precisely Dawn's voice that is the band's most significant peculiarity, dragging everyone else along with her murderous screams accompanied by rough tones and making the atmosphere wickedly painful and brutal. The riffs of Caleb Quinn and Ross Robinson (later a famous producer) always sound raw and metallic, embellished with fairly fast solos that alternate tapping technique with some less impulsive pauses where dark melodies take over ("Shattered Illusions"). The structures remain immediately accessible, consider the catchy chorus of "Holy Wars," but the moods within each song vary from the Hardcore of "Losers" to the old-school Speed of "Widows Walk," from the fast restarts of "Life Is Pain" and "Blood I Bleed" to the mature slowdowns of "Russian Roulette" and the final mid-tempo "Voltures In The Sky".

There are two schools of thought regarding Détente: the first argues that they were a pivotal band of the excessively underestimated second wave of thrash, authors of one of the most overlooked albums of those years that must necessarily be reconsidered and dusted off not only by the most avid collectors but by all fans; then there's those (like me) who consider the group to be dignified, sometimes too derivative (in certain fragments it's like hearing a hybrid between the early Megadeth and the old Cro-Mags inheriting only their flaws), which had its quarter-hour of fame mainly due to the peculiarity of the singer, as is also demonstrated by the reunion in recent times that has managed, for now, to produce only a bland successor.

Having said that, "Recognize No Authority" (reissued in 2006) remains a record that I recommend to all thrashers who do not disdain certain Punk/Hardcore-leaning sounds (D.R.I. and Corrosion Of Conformity first and foremost) with excellent lyrics denouncing the American society of the time, such as the conflict in the Middle East or women's rights, but if it's the foundational works that leave an indelible mark in history that are your daily bread, I advise you to tune elsewhere without too many regrets.