Razor
Executioner's Song

THE REVIEW

Ladies and gentlemen, here are the Canadian defenders next door, those who wanted to play Thrash Metal, embody it, and become its bastions and benchmarks in the prolific North American scene, which included the ingenious Voivod, but also Exciter as a seminal band, and even Sacrifice.

They only partially succeeded because they played a simple and Mesozoic music, following precisely in the footsteps of Dan Beehler's combo, but they didn't entirely dispel doubts about their all-studs-and-black-leather attitude, which seemed a calculated move. In their sonic assault, the sole prerogative was to be as fast and heavy as possible. So here we are on board a Metal balloon devoid of melodic ballast, but inflated with machine-gun guitars and scathing solos, without epic, slow, or pensive tracks, with a transparent, sincere yet ancient writing ability that, indeed, generated some lively pages of healthy streetwise Thrash.

They didn't make a splash due to fierce competition and the limited budgets provided by the small label Viper, linked to Attic. The band was founded in 1984 in Guelph, Ontario, around the figure of guitarist Dave Carlo, who remained over the years as the group's only original member, enlisting other comrades from the Old School Metal scene invigorated by the new Thrash trend, such as the good bassist Mike Campagnolo and drummer M-BRO, a decent skin-pounder on this record. The mission was to build a retro Speed Metal catapult to launch against the burgeoning Fab Four of American Thrash, using their debut full-length as a projectile. To complete the posse of metal soldiers, they recruited screamer Stace McLaren, known as "Sheepdog", the shepherd dog tasked not only with offering a 'pot' place to the groupie sheep but also with forging vocal stylings on the anvil of "Metal On Metal", an altar immortalized by fellow Canadians Anvil.

After the self-financed mini-album "Armed And Dangerous", this "Executioner's Song" was released in April 1985, almost going face to face with Slayer's "Hell Awaits". At the time, I was in adolescent lethargy, so this album reached my eustachian tubes in 1992, after a binge of 1986 Thrash aged six years. Satiated and sleepy, I thought of using it as an ornament, but here I am, having metabolized it multiple times, with contrasting emotions due to the album artwork (the metal executioner), also induced by the group photo on the back cover, taken after a visit to the S&M boutique, and finally caused by the metallic fanfare unleashed by the grooves of this first "Action!" from the band. Lyrics about death, violence, struggle, concerts in an apocalyptic key between "1997 Escape from New York" and "Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome", in a blend of eleven tracks sometimes Speed, sometimes brisk, with the exception of "Distant Thunder" with its slow and dry gait, with corrosive vocals and Metal sound not strictly Thrash, as well as "The End", the reflective closing song, slipping over the rubble of the metal battle.

Opening with "Take This Torch", their "Hit The Lights", with producer Terry Marostega trying to recreate the sound of early Metallica and continuing with "Fast And Loud", which is more anthemic than fast, endowed with a decadent charm. "Hot Metal", "Gatecrasher", "Time Bomb", that is, the triptych representing the nocturnal happening of the Thrashers hooligans described with skill. It is noticeable that they are not clear about the sound to follow, which is still hybrid, but comparable, in terms of approach, to the debut album of Abattoir, albeit stripped of wild speeds. "City Of Damnation" is the hardest-hitting song of the batch with a buzzy sound and verses sung by Stace with a nasal voice, garnished with collective background vocals from the group, but the fact remains that the recipe is somewhat banal, though nothing less than decent: after all, it's 1985 (they know it too), so everything can still work.

Ultimately, a record that can be listened to, hardly appetizing for those who indulge with "Ride The Lightning": few purchase the album, myself included, considering Razor as lovable underdogs of Metal. Unexpectedly, they will surprise us with the second episode, so only the writing on the back cover remains, almost a program: "Welcome to the slaughter, I Hope You're having fun"