Wrathchild America
3-D

1991. The best thrash album of the year came out and no one noticed.

WRATCHILD AMERICA, a band formed in 1983, hailing from Maryland (USA), with this album reached their second recording effort after the debut "CLIMBING THE WALLS" (1989). If the debut was an excellent example of thrash metal, this second work leaves astonishingly impressed by the amount of time and genre changes that the band manages to incorporate into a context built on solid thrash metal riffs.

The band features bassist BRAD DIVENS (now a renowned world-famous producer), a singer with a voice not too far off from the best HETFIELD, a solid and imaginative drummer, SHANNON LARKIN (later drummer for UGLY KID JOE and GODSMACK), and two great guitarists like JAY ABBENE (later also with CROWBAR) and TERRY CARTER.

The originality of WRATCHILD AMERICA has no equal in the thrash scene, and this becomes immediately clear with the title track 3-D MAN, the band's manifesto song, capable of merging 4 accelerations, slowdowns, funky and jazzy inserts, guitar solos into a song that sticks in your head after the first listen. The compositional madness continues with the pressing rhythm of SPY, supported by a great bass and Divens' good vocal performance.

GENTLEMAN DEATH and FOREVER ALONE are two more canonical thrash songs with, naturally, numerous tempo changes ranging from mid-tempo to speed within seconds. DRAINTIME is a particular song that combines more melodic and psychedelic parts with tight and direct metal riffs, a small masterpiece of musical construction and bizarreness, listen to believe.

The musicians' frightening technique and originality are also evident in SURROUNDED BY IDIOTS and DESERT GRINS, which contains classical guitars, electric distortions, accelerations, and heaviness. It's impossible to describe the number of inputs our guys manage to put into every single song. While WHAT'S YOUR PLEASURE? is pure thrash, the same cannot be said for the instrumental PREGO, which combines JAZZ, FUNKY, DOOM METAL, SPEED METAL, CLASSICAL and more.

The CD closes with metal tracks ANOTHER NAMELESS FACE and //, which halfway features a "reggae" interlude, and the cover "joke" I AIN'T DRUNK, I'M JUST DRINKIN', a fun and boozy blues tune. Adding to this is the production by ALEX PERIALAS (a renowned thrash metal producer... TESTAMENT above all) and the supervision of ROB HUNTER, former drummer of the great RAVEN, making the picture perfect.

After this album, WRATCHILD AMERICA was forced to change their name to "SOULS AT ZERO", but with that, their music changed too, losing originality and transforming into a more ordinary and heavier GRUNGE-PANTERIZED style, but that's another story. If you come across this CD in secondhand stores, don't miss it, especially since I think it hasn't been reprinted since.