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Realm
of Terror
signifies great improvement for a band that was already doing
good work. Best of all, the Cali trio known as Merciless Death
has improved in all the right places without leaving any of
their harsh basic thrash metal tactics behind. Most noticeable
the improvements have been made in the way the member’s
interplay. Despite the loose nature of the music Merciless Death
is in this record clearly a tighter band that is working almost
at an intuitive level, where the drums, guitars and vocals
respond to and feed off each other. The jumpy and headbang-friendly
energy remains intact with the band careening over ten songs in
a little over twenty-eight minutes. Sure, there is no fucking
around here. Either that or is all fucking around, as Merciless
Death also achieve a stronger sound and come off way more
confident.
The guitars
of Dan Holder now have that same desperate nature of Slayer and
disregard the melodious factor of the solos of say Testament for
an aggressive more crossover edge. And it fits just as well, as
his lonely riffs are enough to over power a triple guitar
attack. On the vocals Andy Torres also sounds more assured,
where as in Evil in the Night he sounded like a teenager
with all the potential, now his raspier snarl seems to have come
of age. And Cesar Torres too has made headway into his drumset,
now offering a more updated sound with a far more expert use of
the double bass. Not in style but in looks he keeps on reminding
me of a young Andy Galeon.
Mention
apart should be given to the production job which this time
around has much more girth and a bigger low bottom. The whole of
Realm of Terror is simply more professional work, a fact
that hasn’t gone unnoticed by the band. Just check out those
smiles in the insert. There in fact seems to be no gloom nor
doom in this band these days. Merciless Death scores extra
points for the awesome cover artwork of Andreas Marschall.
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Read the 2007 Deaf Sparrow interview with Merciless Death here |
