Repulsion
Horrified

THE REVIEW

Tepes, more or less like Sister Germana, will do you a big favor today; he'll teach you how to draw blood from a stone!

Imagine owning a record company (preferably one focused on Extreme Metal) and wanting to make some extra money without necessarily having to sign a band whose live shows resemble a set from a Dario Argento film; well, what would you do? It's incredibly simple, just ask all the bands on your roster who they listened to when they were sixteen, make sure at least one of the bands mentioned is dead and buried, pay the surviving members a pittance for the rights, and reissue the album that was considered the best at the time.

This is what the masterminds at Relapse Records must have thought when they decided to remaster "Horrified" exactly eighteen years after its release and thirteen years after the band's demise; however, when I saw this little disc on "Contaminated 5.0" (the Relapse compilation), I thought it might be worth spending that money. Yes, folks, for those who haven't read properly, the album in question is from 1986, a time when Death Metal wasn't born yet, and the band dissolved in 1991, just as Death Metal was in excellent health; a case for Tepes!

Obviously, because when you're talking about CDs so disastrous that even the band members deny having recorded them, my interest is piqued; especially since, in light of the facts and the listening, I can safely declare that Death Metal also started here. No one will ever mention Repulsion, no one knows of their existence, but the fact remains that while Metallica was breaking through with "Master Of Puppets," Megadeth with "Peace Sells... But Who's Buying?," Slayer with "Reign In Blood," Anthrax with "Amongst The Living" (and I'm deliberately leaving out many others), there was a band in Michigan that was already a step ahead, actually, three or four steps. With this, I'm not denying the importance of Napalm Death (who started recording "Scum" the same year) or Possessed (whose "Seven Churches" came out the year before), but to these great bands more or less everyone recognizes a significant contribution to the birth of Death Metal, to Repulsion "just a muuu® of no one".

That said, we can begin to talk about the album, the first and last LP of the American band, preceded and followed by Demos and EPs; nineteen tracks of fierce Death Grind that aims straight at the jugular. As you might imagine, refinement is not the quartet's main characteristic, which, on the contrary, makes its raw and stinky proposal its trademark: no frills, no atmosphere, just dirt and distortion, the only elements with which to stand out in a landscape like the metal of the eighties. Just one listen is enough to understand that Repulsion is not serious but does it anyway, that they enjoy describing the most ignorant violence in their lyrics, that they enjoy playing to ruin someone's ears. From this, it can be understood that their attitude is still influenced, indeed, belongs to Thrash Metal, although musically far different. A sound that was unprecedentedly violent for its time marries with a voice that few or no one (see the aforementioned Possessed) had used and which critics hurried to call growling; even if different from today's Death growl, one must imagine that it was 1986 and that even a raw and relatively clean growl like this represented a great innovation. Not to mention the drums, not technical at all but effective from the point of view of acoustic devastation: the first examples of Blast Beat are alternated with passages more blatantly Thrashy and Hardcore Punk, definitely spartan but undeniably compelling.

A similar discourse could be made for the riffing, to say the least, sparse and "essential": also heavily influenced by the nastiest Thrash, it is distinguished by greater power and aggression. A wall of sound constructed with a few, simple chords and assisted by a bass so distorted it sounds like a buzz and, above all, some solos really stretched to the limit. You say the riffing is repetitive? Of course, it is, the songs are too, and on the other hand, it could not be otherwise; some element of civil music (for example, the division into verses and chorus) remains, but being Raw Death makes the thing particularly inedible. Considering that the recording must have cost twenty or thirty dollars (a polite way of saying it's more than lousy), "Horrified" becomes even more challenging for those unfamiliar with the genre and even more appealing for those who love things done badly.

Repulsion does everything wrong, especially in writing the songs: the tracks have no head or tail, they are very short, fast, and disordered, and that is exactly what makes them irresistible. If you don't feel like indulging in a demanding listen (forgive the alliteration) or if you want to understand what the Cradle of Obscenity is (forgive the pun), listen to "Festering Boils" or the title track "Horrified" and you'll understand where Autopsy, Entombed, and various epigones came from.

This album is filth erected to a system, but not with the putrid spirit of the aforementioned Autopsy or the bloodthirsty morbosity of Cannibal Corpse, but with those fat Thrash shenanigans and, what is better, without any enthusiasm. A virtue for stuff written in 1986, enough to earn it a good score like this; a work and a band that time has erased and that I and Relapse have resurrected to let the world know about one of the many fathers of that bastard creature called Death Metal. Recommended to anyone who loves metal (old and new), to anyone curious to know who are those few who contributed to the birth of the favorite genre of this other few who is writing, and to anyone who has ten euros and half an hour to spare.