HISTORY
We travel back in time to America, the thrash-metal movement was growing at full speed and the world was starting to get filled with all kinds of metal. America had the biggest thrash-metal stock than any other part of the world, and if we look deeper into the American thrash-metal vault we can find this aggressive little band. This is a band which has be considered to a
Slayer sounding band (according to the press), and this band is called
Blood Feast! A quite entertaining band in my ears, not one of the most unique bands but not one of the most horrible.
Blood Feast was formed in New Jersey in 1985, at the beginning the band was called
Blood Lust but after been counted in some metal-compilations they changed their name into
Blood Feast. This band plays thrash/speed-metal and some people has also considered them to play death-metal material, though I can't see why this can sound like death-metal but who cares right? The thing is that this band plays aggressive thrash-metal with speed, you can compare these guys to bands like
Slayer,
Dark Angel or early
Kreator, then you might have a small idea of how this band can sound like.
ALBUM INFORMATION
This album is their first full-length album, this was released in 1987 and this album is called
''Kill For Pleasure''. As I mentioned beofore, this band has been compared to the thrash pioneers
Slayer, and why they have been compared to them is because of the lyrics to mention one factor. The lyrics are somewhat similar to
Slayer's, I often don't care about the lyrics in these types of bands but
Blood Feast often sings about violent and obscure stuff.
Blood Feast often uses horror themes, death, suicide and other sick themes. Enough about the lyrics, lets look at the overall material. This album was a very cool album, the whole album is loaded with thrashing energy which will never stop until the last track. This material is heavy, very intensive, a bit grim too but this might not be the best musicianship though. The band plays very good but this is nothing high-tech, this is high quality thrash-metal but it is the production that might drag down the album a bit. But, this album has very catchy and heavy songs alongside somewhat crazy vocal work.
THE BAND MEMBERS
Gary Markovitch - The sole songer of this band, this dude has some interesting vocals. If you have heard
Steve Souza from the thrash veterans
Exodus you can imagine how this singer sounds, but if you give him some drugs of some sort you get
Markovitch. This singer might sound a bit like a death-singer but still not, the vocals are quick, harsh half-grunting, add some quick shouts on that and you get a wierd but still very cool singer. But, I like these kinds of odd vocals, though I'm pretty sure that there are people who will definitely hate this kind of vocal work.
Mike Basden /
Adam Tranquilli - This band has two guitarists and they known how to thrash, the guitar work is heavy, intensive and quite half death-metallic from time to time. The shredding and riffing is basically pure thrash-metal but you must bang your head a few times in each song, the songs are not so catchy or rhythmic but they still kick your a** quite hard. I can just say that the rhythms, lead work and soloing is above good that for sure. And the solos of course, they are basically like any aggressive thrash solo, these solos are chaotic, very intensive and often high-pitched. Not my personal taste of solos but the sound pretty good though.
Lou Starita - A band needs a bassist, and this bassist does make some noise actually. The production of thebass has turnd it to a electric and fuzzy bass, it maybe doesn't sound so interesting but it really helps to build a steady and half-dense rhythm section. There are no standout performances but you can definitely hear the bass, though you can hear some small filling sections and some high-pitched bass tunes but thats all.
Kevin Kuzma - This guy handles the drums, and it sounds very good. I would say that this is the only instrument that has a clear sound, it is not as dizzy and blury as the guitars and the bass. Well what can I sasy about the drums, they sound like most other thrash-metal drummers. The patterns are often very intensive, they are also pretty heavy and the variety among the patterns are pretty good, there might be some repetitive warnings but this sounds good.
MY THOUGHTS ABOUT THIS ALBUM
Definitely one of the better thrash-metal bands that feels funny in a way but is still very deadly. One thing I like about this album was the never-ending thrash energy, all the songs was like in-your-face, but in thrash-mode. Some songs might seem similar to other songs on the album but all of them rocked hard, some songs had some groovy tunes here and there while others had classic thrash-formulas in them. A second thing I enjoyed with this album was the vocal style, this felt very similar to
Steve Souza, except that this dude had a slightly rawer sound. These kinds of vocals are the factors that makes bands unique (or copy cats to others), but I thought that this was a very cool vocal style, it made the band a bit entertaining and aggressive at the same time. A third thing that I liked was the production, it maybe isen't the best but it is always fun to discover how bands sounded back in the 80's. Every instrument was clear, maybe not clear but audible compared to other bands, the guitars were loud, the bass was loud and the drums were clear. This musical mix stuck to my brain and I will always remember this, especially the distorted and gloomy bass. A thing I thought was negative was the songs, all the songs were great but I thought that there was some signs of repetity. But I just have admit one thing, the fuzzy noise from the bass did bug me sometimes, it did hurt my ears a couple of times but this was nothing serious though.
MY CONCLUSION
I just had to laugh a couple of times while listening to this, the vocals did the fun part while the instruments grinded my my mind with thrashing brutality. This was one of the coolest bands since I heard bands like
Anthrax and
Nuclear Assault, this band was very aggressive and forceful indeed. I enjoyed every second of it but I think I won't give a very high score though, but I will definitely recommend this album to people who like aggressive thrash-metal. If you like
Slayer,
Devastation,
Dark Angel or
Exodus you might enjoy this, or even
will. Time to say good bye for now so I hope you enjoyed this review and I hope this has been a good guidance.
RECOMMENDED TRACKS (
no particular order this time)
-- Bloodlust
-- Cannibal
-- R.I.P.
-- Venomous Death
-- The Evil
This album will be given a 3.5/5 because of its aggressive nature, non-stop thrashing madness and classic thrash vocals
