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Here’s a juicy bone plucked from the death/thrash/black metal cauldron of 1985. Toronto quartet Sacrifice were nearly as fast and lethal as any other band on the planet when they spewed forth this highly impressive debut demo. They had quickly absorbed all the nuances of Slayer’s Hell Awaits, and pressed the accelerator pedal to climb to D.R.I. Dealing With It speeds. The panic and energy never relent. The hyper instrumental title track makes Death Angel’s “The Ultraviolence” sound as old-school as Iron Maiden’s “Phantom of the Opera.” This demo version of the cut “Decapitation” is still one of the craziest thrash outbursts I’ve ever heard–intense as hell, and sick with evil. While thrashing with insane abandon, the band’s shared lineage with early death metal is undeniable. The semi-epic “Beyond Death” sounds like a matched pair to “Blood Runs From the Altar” by Tomas Lindberg’s old Swedish death metal band Grotesque — but that was years later.

This demo is Diabolic Force 002, the second release on the label best known for unleashing the Canadian band Slaughter on the world. In fact, I bought my copy of the tape on that basis, snatching it from the small demo rack at the legendary Record Peddler in Toronto during a family trip there in late 1985. (My mom found us cheap lodging on the top floor of some kind of insane asylum/hospice where they locked us in at night!) For a little historical perspective on the environment that spawned Sacrifice: every bootleg T-shirt stall on the main strip Yonge St. — and there were dozens — sold Venom and Metallica jerseys, along with a bizarre design popular with Canadian punks that read “Destroy!” above a crucified Jesus with a giant red swastika in the background. Venom’s Possessed and C.O.C.’s Animosity were in every record store window. And the Record Peddler had the Mentors’ You Axed for It and Oral Sex hanging on the wall. For Anvil, Slaughter, Razor, nearby Exciter, and Sacrifice, Toronto deserves a lot of credit for forming underground metal as we know it today.

If you’ve never heard this early Sacrifice stuff, it’s like watching Cannibal Ferox for the first time.

SACRIFICE * “The Exorcism” 8-song demo 1985 [40.2MB .rar]

Thanks to Sacrifice frontman Rob Urbinati for giving thumbs up to this post. By the way, I asked him what they thought about “Decapitation” after laying it down, and he said: “Hmmm, “Decapitation”? I just remember we thought it was the fastest ever!”

The band reunited for shows in 2006 and 2008, following a massive high-quality reissue campaign by Brazilian label Marquee Records. Those South American lunatics have repackaged Sacrifice’s classic Metal Blade albums Torment in Fire, Soldiers of Misfortune, and Forward to Termination, adding tons of bonus tracks including this demo and others. Visit the official Sacrifice site built by Marquee for info, along with extensive band history, videos, vintage photos, and yes — guitar tabs, to help you thrash with real diabolic force.

LINK

In the heat of the late 1980s thrash demo trading fever, yes, it was possible to have a super-group of members from bands that were little more than demo acts themselves. Chicago area deathly thrashers Sindrome arrived with much fanfare in 1987, boasting formidable studio sound that rivaled most thrash vinyl of the day, a swanky color cassette cover, and a laundry list of resume credits that included legendary underground names like Master, Deathstrike, and Devastation (IL). That first demo “Into the Halls of Extermination” launched an impressive underground career — most bands today would love to sell 10,000 of anything — on the basis of tough, Dark Angel-style thrash with a corroded Venom influence and even some touches of Terrorizer. (And why not? Terrorizer were highly indebted to Master, Deathstrike, and Devastation.)

Though Sindrome were in touch with the times commercially and musically, nothing more happened. They sat out the first wave of small potato record label offerings, but failed to land an expected plum spot on the Combat or Roadrunner roster. Four years later, there was another demo, “Vault of Inner Conscience.” They were still better than lots of signed thrash acts, and a little more interesting, but for whatever reason — inflated expectations, poor timing, geography — they never managed to release a full album.

Fortunately, in 2002 someone from the band registered the Sindrome domain and uploaded full MP3s of Sindrome’s “Into the Halls of Extermination” and “Vault of Inner Conscience” demo tapes. The first demo was remixed in 1992 at Morrisound and re-released with a new cover — this is that version.

SINDROME * Complete 1987 and 1991 demos [EXTERNAL MP3 LINK]

Since 1992 there isn’t much to report. Bassist Shaun Glass went on to death metal stalwarts Broken Hope, then formed the alterna-metal act Soil in 1997, and recently left Soil for the more aggressive Dirge. Farther from the bright lights, Sindrome drummer Tony Ochoa plays in an aggressive modern rock-type band called Servitude.

I’m pretty sure Cop Shoot Cop is the best band New York City ever produced, based on the caustic metal-scraping Headkick Facsimile record from 1988, and then the slick gallery of nightmares Ask Questions Later from 1993. With two bassists thrashing under a dangerous tower of metal percussion, this big giant barbed middle finger of a band decorated their sound Lower East Side Chainsaw Massacre style with all the best elements of no wave, upscale “new music”, punk, and maybe even thrash metal. This was the angry, amped-up pinnacle of a scene that spawned Sonic Youth, Swans, Unsane, Prong, and Pussy Galore. Most importantly, they felt like a grief-stricken junk monster rising from the smoke, sweat, and grease of New York City. During the glowering days of 1988-1993, they orchestrated perfectly the reality of the crack epidemic, bums roasting pigeons in trash cans, blood-soaked heroin tissues tiling bar bathroom ceilings, random late-night shootings, nervousness all day, and burned out cars everywhere. And they transcended that with Ask Questions Later, when they became more like the Bad Seeds and less like the Birthday Party.

Hip enough to tap the vein, Strapping Young Lad did a bad metal cover of “Room 429″ from Ask Questions Later, but the original is really a masterpiece of drug/torture/suicide narrative. Great lyrics, great rhythmic overkill, great band.

The man in the metal cage, C$C drummer Phil Puleo, runs a retrospective site which includes several dozen MP3s spanning the band’s career, including album and live tracks, demos, and a Peel Session. I saw them play several times in the early 1990s, and I used to see the guys around a lot, but I was too far on the periphery to even began to tell tales now on the turmoil they went through in those days. I remember their tour van was an out-of-commission special education “short bus” with a military camo paint job. That was pretty funny.

LINK to copshootcop.com and updates on the veterans.

Back in the day, there wasn’t enough Slayer to go around, so a few enterprising thrashers worked out how to whip up a batch of homemade Slayer-metal in the garage. One of the most successful of the Slayer clones, especially on a regional level, was Devastation from Corpus Christi, TX, who signed to Combat Records and held court over the Lone Star thrash scene from 1987 through 1991. And if your thirst for Slayer couldn’t be slaked by any amount of repeat plays of Devastation’s Violent Termination? Well, you could head down the street to a smaller, darker, even more cramped garage and check out fellow Corpus Christi speed legion Anialator.

For this first demo, the band was a quintet. Their leader singer left shortly after Wild Rags pressed this tape to vinyl, and in 1989 they recorded a mini-LP as a quartet (also for Wild Rags–and available as a picture disc). Bassist Alex Dominguez went on to Devastation, but as far as I know no members of Devastation ever graduated to playing in Slayer. (Just kidding, of course–the official understudies in Dark Angel would never have let that happen!)

So enjoy some derivative mystery meat processed from choice Slayer cuts during the legendary thrash metal heat wave of 1987.

ANIALATOR * 4-song demo 1987 [19.3MB .rar]

I can’t explain the quasi-pornographic name spelling — after all, these guys made it to vinyl at least a year before Canada’s long-running Annihilator. A little additional info is posted at Reign in Pain, including a photo of tour shirt featuring the band’s great graphic depicting a bloody skull impaled on the state of Texas.

Though this tape has been the source of so much fun and fascination over the years, I have little to say about Machine Dog’s obscure Sic ‘Em demo. This is the first of two tapes by the trio from Cherry Hill, NJ. Both of them were excellent chasers to my preferred afternoon cocktail as an 18-year old: Southern Comfort and Peach Faygo. (Sometimes I went for cherry vodka and Cherry Coke, but that would be on a more Old Lady Drivers kind of day.) Usually you need a small mountain of sugar to pull your lips back in the uncontrollable smiles that will follow your first exposure to “No Balls,” “Adrenaline Train,” and “Packed in Ice.” I refuse to pick a favorite–they are all comical speed metal with outrageous falsetto vocals and the tightest songwriting this side of Bugs Bunny. And do you see that mascot? Then download!

MACHINE DOG * “Sic ‘Em” 3-song demo 1986 [16.7MB .rar]

The only sign of this band ever having existed is an incredible 20-song Anthology on CDBaby.com, but I couldn’t preview, select, or download anything, so maybe something’s wrong. The page promises that the band is working on new material–Machine Dog, if you ever play a show, I am so there.

Thanks to recently-reactivated At the Gates drummer Adrian Erlandsson (also ex-Cradle of Filth) for posting three great demo songs recorded in two days in 1994 by his Terror project. Fulfilling some kind of Gothenburg headbanger fantasy, this is basically Erlandsson, the Björler twins from At the Gates, and dearly-departed Dissection frontman Jon Nödtveidt doing a tight-as-hell take on catchy Terrorizer-style death metal/grind. Nödtveidt’s vocals are especially cool, with occasional effects and a lower-range delivery of his trademark ghastly approach. With a total running time of exactly five minutes, the songs are called “Radiation,” “Destruction,” and “Terror”–what more do you need to know?

TERROR * 3-song demo 1994 [4.5MB .rar]

UPDATE: There’s been trouble with this link–hopefully it’s a bandwidth issue and the demo will be back online soon.

Thanks, Adrian Erlandsson!

Though they surfaced during a time when the grindcore term was just beginning to be tossed around, suburban L.A. act Malicious Grind was a relentless crossover monster in the vein of D.R.I., S.O.D., and maybe Cryptic Slaughter. The loose energy and low-res garage production obscure how much this is a pretty powerful band, jetting between fast blasts of 1987 speed like “Fasterspaz” and ultra-crunchy mosh parts like the catchy “Stupid Cops.” (Not just the police feel the heat–they also stick it to some guy called “Ronald Reagan.”)

MxGx released an umpteen-song LP in 1988 with future Man Is the Bastard squealer Eric Wood on lead vocals, but this tape finds them a frantic trio, with alternating male and female voices on the mic. (Ingrid Baumgart from Flipside scene darlings Bulimia Banquet plays bass.) Likewise, the demo jumps on guitar whammy sweeps back and forth between crunchy metallic crossover and generic ’80s hardcore. The band’s centerpiece, the five-and-a-half-minute instrumental jam riff orgy “Malicious Grind” is epic!

MALICIOUS GRIND * 9-song demo 1987 [26.8MB .rar]

While I was dubbing this demo, coincidentally Ingrid got in touch after hearing Insecticide on my Bloody Roots show on Sirius. She added a funny detail: “We opened up for Nuclear Assault and Verbal Abuse–and we were banned from Hollywood clubs for our fans doing pits before pits were acceptable!”

Go to cdbaby.com for tracks from their LP and to read a couple old reviews from MaximumRocknroll and Thrasher. Note to Tribe Called Quest: If your wallet turns up, we’ll call you.

Three or four years ago, I went to Montreal a few days before New Year’s, and lucked out to catch a special show at Les Foufones Electriques that was basically a giant party for Quebec’s heavy music scene. Voivod played nothing but Sex Pistols covers in their headlining slot. The excellent (and sadly aptly-named) thrash band Anonymous did a killer set of early Metallica and Slayer songs, true to the ragged spirit of zits and denim, and the room went crazy. Somewhere in the middle of the night, the maestros of Groovy Aardvark played basically Jane’s Addiction’s entire Nothing’s Shocking album–I’m sure with more power than Jane’s Addiction ever did themselves. I was floored, and probably had dreams that night of arriving late to a college exam naked or something.

Turns out Groovy Aardvark has carved out a big name for themselves playing genre-bending hard-edged progressive alternative punk metal in French-speaking Canada for the past two decades. (I guess on a limited level they succeeded in creating the post-metal career Death Angel wanted when they changed their name to The Organization and started wearing paisley and John Lennon glasses.) That was all news to me; I knew them as the clean-sounding but blazing crossover act captured on this classic flawlessly executed hyperspeed funky metallic hardcore demo. Especially for fans of Spazztic Blurr, Old Lady Drivers, and similar craziness, this is the stuff–hey, Jim Plotkin’s demo stack don’t lie!

GROOVY AARDVARK * 4-Song Promo Demo 1989 [35.1MB .rar]

Histories of the band are pretty elusive, but it seems they formed in 1986 under the name Schizophrenic Muff Divers. Currently, the band’s sole remaining founding member Vincent Peake has been moonlighting on bass for Voivod when their famous ex-Metallica bassist can’t make shows.

See also: Sound of the Beast: L’Histoire Definitive du Heavy Metal

The fertile Texas metal scene has always been a tight-knit fraternity that welcomes every type of banger from Lone Star knuckleheads to brainy prairie visionaries. Take early Exodus/S.O.D.-style sick thrashers Rotting Corpse. Formed by Dimebag (then “Diamond”) Darrell Abbott’s guitar tech Walt Trachsler and fellow Pantera roadie Jim Mulqueen while their bosses were still pumping spandex in regional rock halls, the band also featured future Solitude Aeturnus guitarist John Perez. Soon, Steve Murphy of thinking man’s crossover act Process Revealed joined on bass, and by 1990 Rotting Corpse had swapped members with Necrovore, Gammacide, Hellpreacher, and Covenant, wrecking plenty of stages in the meantime.

This three-song tape purloins a LOT of choice riffs from Exodus’ Bonded by Blood, but that’s not a bad place to start. Their zealous thrash energy can’t be faked, and compared to a lot of excitable demo bands at the time, they can actually play — and keep a fast tempo together.

ROTTING CORPSE * 3-song demo 1986 [12.3MB .rar]

Who knows what influence these guys had on Pantera’s decision to play thrash? Rotting Corpse later traded the Abbott brothers a used motorboat for studio time to record a future demo, and Vinnie Paul even ran the mixing board. When Rotting Corpse was all over, Walter Trachsler briefly played guitar with Death on the Spiritual Healing tour.

Two or three years ago Rotting Corpse rebanded for a few shows and re-released their demos on CD in three modest editions of 100 copies. There’s also a historical DVD that I’ve got to see. Their MySpace page is HERE, and read an excellent lengthy interview with Steve Murphy — now a computer entrepeneur — at texasmetalunderground.com.

While getting the manuscript for Daniel Ekeroth’s Swedish Death Metal ready for print, I picked up a good copy of Obscurity’s 2nd demo, “Damnation’s Pride,” from 1987. I don’t think the world could have been handed a bigger hint that Sweden would take over everything in five years’ time.

Their truth-in-advertising band name aside, Obscurity had a commanding presence. A far cry from their chaotic first demo (where the guitarists dubbed in drums after recording everything else!), “Damnation’s Pride” is just a triumph of ripping madness. The thick guitars, the gut-spewing vocals, the intense speed, and most of all that loveable Swedish death-groove are already in full swing here. If you like Nihilist’s 1988 demos but want to go deeper into the genesis of death metal, look no further:

OBSCURITY * “Damnations Pride” demo 1987 [14.9MB .rar]

My friends at Scarlet Records in Italy reissued both demos on CD back in 1998. The band themselves host a cryptic web site HERE, and their minimal MySpace streaming the four songs from this demo is HERE. Now if only the band would reform…