Grip Inc.
Power Of Inner Strength

The Grip Inc. represent the "refugium peccatorum" of the dying Thrash: a cosmopolitan conclave of musicians dissatisfied with their artistic curriculum vitae, eager to catapult themselves into the control room of ultraheavy music, releasing their artistic "Greek fire" without yielding to the business-is-business laws of more celebrated bands.

In 1993, Dave Lombardo, former unique drummer of Slayer, joins forces with Gus Chambers, a punk veteran from Albion and currently a member of Squad 21, to form a league of Thinking Metal resistant to media pressures, with a precise permissible tension of its components, endowed with high fatigue resistance as well as significant rhythmic ductility of its metal-non-metal shards. Bobby Gustafson, former axe of Overkill, and the unknown bassist Chaz Grimaldi enter the field, both quickly disappearing with the entry into formation of the spicy all-rounder guitarist-producer Waldemar Sorichta, a cumbersome and eclectic personality of the extreme German scene, former axeman of the Techno-Thrashers teutonic Despair (www.metal.archives.com), allied with Lombardo in the lab project Voodoocult. The super band is completed by newcomer bassist Jason Viebrooks, a former member in 1992 of the ill-fated Heathen (www.heathenmetal.com).

In 1995, this "Power Of Inner Strength" is released with a front cover supposedly showing a fertilized egg under a microscope. Thus begins a patchwork of multiform musical styles where Thrash is centrifuged with feverish sonic influences, whether they are the distorted blues of "Innate Affliction" or the calm before the storm of "Colors Of Death", from the arpeggioed guitar intro "Blowin' In The Wind" of a ghost town, almost a funeral march that then rages into Slayer-like speed, used as a catalyst for Gus Chambers' "Verbal Razors", with his Satori herbal spray throat. The varied and never spoiled songwriting sees Lombardo composing (in part) four songs, embellished by his excellent drumming fireworks. However, the main act is Sorichta, the band's "furor teutonicus," capable of guitar lacework in the twilight zone, as well as impertinent riffs. "Ostracized" is an example, with a denunciation text on a war veteran's return home, rejected by society like Kafka's Gregor Samsa from "The Metamorphosis." Throughout the song, a circular riff with a vague "Led Sabbath" flavor from Waldemar takes center stage, shining as a producer ad hoc capable of capturing a tight sound not indebted to Bay Area usury, but neither to the smoky Kreatorian cellars of Essen; nonetheless, the solos are frugal, replaced by industrial touches, ethnic rhythms, and swirling sonic spirals in "Monster Among US." (wordplay), a j'accuse against a pedophile serial-killer sculpted as a "societal beast."

The instrumental prologue "Toque De Muerto" opens the dance with the scent of native rites emanating from the stereo speakers, swiftly halted by the hook-guitar of "Savage Seas" a cadenced track, with Lombardo controlled on percussion and Gus Chambers' shouted, masculine, and determined vocals, reflecting his Punk past. "Hostage To Heaven" is Lombardo's masterpiece-revenge track, where Slayer's Speed-Thrash is revitalized with a sound more refined than finely tuned, not at all indebted to the "diabolus in musica", with more mature drumming garnished by a Benante-style double bass wall and omnipotent rolls, with a melodic and articulated solo that is as considered as it is effective. "Heretic War Chant" is the other babà to savor slowly, swollen with tribal eurhythmics, then taking off into articulated rhythmic section partitions, with Sorychta skillful like a spider in weaving hard phrasings, which, however, are felt as the base structure of the piece, mixed with other elements (of anger).

There is some staggering with "Cleanse The Seed" and "The Longest Hate", two well-played tracks but without a precise identity and too shouted. Transeat. There is a limit even to versatility, and Sorychta does not grasp it, filing down the harshness of the songs, a flaw that will persist in following works. Great debut for a band in their honeymoon, even live, but the sales level of the Californian Assassins seems unattainable. The Japanese version of the album includes an additional track "Dragging Me Down" which is a divertissement, with fury similar to "Hang The Pope" by Nuclear Assault, less than a minute long: good exercise for Chambers and Lombardo.

In 1997, "Nemesis" will follow, showing Grip Inc. as a promise kept, but not entirely.