Razor
Open Hostility

Rage, fists, blood, violence, and more violence...

We're certainly not talking about a shooter film or a cult B movie with a Gore/splatter taste; we're talking about the seventh effort by the Canadian band Razor, who in their rather unfortunate career have made sonic violence their trademark.

The band of guitarist Dave Carlo (incidentally the only constant member left in the group) with this "Open Hostility" definitively establishes their characteristic sound, which excludes originality or inventiveness from the get-go in favor of immediacy and direct impact on the listener. So don't expect the same solutions adopted by the extravagant Voivod or the ultra-technical Annihilator (both compatriots of ours); here we talk about delirium, energy ready to explode at any moment; we're talking about post-headbanging neck pain and adrenaline.

All sensations that only these kinds of albums can confer to you, those albums that you randomly dig up when you think: Today I'm really in the mood for 'ignorance'! Even though it's not actually the same ignorance as albums like Evil Invaders (which I still absolutely adore), because in Open Hostility our guys demonstrate their definitive technical maturation, accompanied by an almost excellent production that's decidedly more polished. Open Hostility is therefore, on the one hand, an album devoid of originality and refinement, but on the other hand, it's undoubtedly a polemic (as declared by Dave Carlo) against the sad fate Thrash Metal encountered at the dawn of the '90s, where bands like Metallica, Anthrax, Megadeth, Testament etc., abandoned their original sound to adapt to the new trends dictated by the advent of Grunge. Open Hostility is a response in the series: Hey Headbangers, don't give up, Thrash will never die, and we are still here!

So, that said, it can be reiterated that with this work, the Razor certainly had no intention to give up everything, despite an accident that happened to drummer Rob Mills, which prevented him from playing on this album. The question arises spontaneously: Who is the drummer on this album? Given the high speed of the rhythms that have characterized every LP of Razor, an average fan would expect some kind of Dave Lombardo ready to take Mills' place. But no, because here there's not a drummer, but - Plot twist - a drum machine!

It's thus quite unexpected the choice of Dave Carlo not to look for a new drummer, preferring to adopt an electronic instrument, yet he did it. Perhaps this can be considered the first album without a flesh-and-blood drummer in the history of Heavy Metal; an occurrence that will repeat with the Brazilian Sarcófago in the album Hate in 1994 (although the choice of the drum machine was directed solely toward achieving an extremely high number of bpm). Well, this might make many frown, but I absolutely do not recommend having prejudices, because listening to the album will almost automatically remove this inconvenience.

Once you get over this so-called flaw, there's another factor to highlight: the fierce screams of the historic and blond singer Stace 'Sheepdog' McLaren are missing (how can we forget 'Below The Belt', 'Edge Of The Razor', 'Tortured Skull', 'Cut Throat'), whom I frankly prefer slightly over this Bob Reid, who replaced Stace already in 'Shotgun Justice'. Dave Carlo on guitar, Bob Reid on vocals, Jon Armstrong, and...the drum machine therefore give birth in 1991 to this full-length that's tough as nails, reiterating once again Razor's policy made of street brawls, sharp blades, and psychotic Serial Killers.

The various 'In Protest', 'Bad Vibrations', the explosive 'Road Gunner', do nothing but confirm what has just been said. Also worth mentioning is the fun and 'mosh-worthy' 'Cheers', with the chorus: Cheeeeers to my frieeeends! The single rhythmic and lead guitar of Dave manages to be incredibly aggressive, as demonstrated by the opening of 'Iron Legions', in some ways similar to the beginning of 'Torture Tactics' by the no less ferocious and bloody Vio-lence. But it's 'Sucker For Punishment' the real gem of the album: it starts with a bang, making you think of another canonical song; but incredibly, at some point, the rhythms decrease significantly and remain so for several minutes. Here, our guys have strangely decided to temper their restless and ruthless nature for a moment, making 'Sucker For Punishment' one of their, in my opinion, most successful songs. However, you can feel in that slow progress that the urge to hit the accelerator again is ready to explode; and so it happens, off they go again in the classic 'Tupatupa' of the most enthusiastic Mosh, where Bob sings: Fight the System! Urging the so-called 'Sucker' not to be enslaved by the system. I avoided a track-by-track analysis given the limited versatility of the album: almost all the songs don't exceed 2 to a maximum of 3 minutes of duration, and on first impact, it's hard to distinguish them from one another except for 'Sucker For Punishment'.

The band's masterpieces were others (Executioner's Song and Violent Restitution as far as I'm concerned), but this 'Open Hostility' still deserves listening, given the band's consistency and their love for Metal, which has never waned. For those hungry for rougher and meaner Thrash Metal, this work can be considered one of the last true examples of Old School played as it should be; hence, when listening to albums of this caliber, one should say screw it to all sorts of prejudice and appreciate this great band for the contribution they have made to the development of the Canadian Heavy Metal scene and, more generally, to the underground scene.