format: LP
year: 1988
country: Australia
label: Quasi Productions
#: -
info: Insert with lyrics. Supposedly made in 600 copies.
style: Thrash Metal
Side A:
I've wanted to review the Australian thrashers RAMPAGE's one and only LP for many years now. I love the weird, almost surreal artwork and private Thrash releases are an unusual and interesting phenomenon initself ...but it's a bloody difficult album to write about, and the main reason for that is that it's also a bloody difficult album to listen to.
The first playthrough will be an ardous experience even to the most die-hard and open-minded Thrash fans. There's so much going on here it takes more than a few spins to properly get into the album and start telling the different tracks apart from eachother. Both musicianship and production is a bit on the rough side (not quite South American-levels of rough though) and that hardly helps. To this day I'm still not sure if I should file "Veil Of Mourn" under Progressive Thrash or just 'brutal Thrash that's a bit too chaotic for its own good'.
The largest problem lies in the truly jambled messes of songs like "Autopsy" of "Satrap" which just feel like random riff'n'rhythm-sallad, and this impression kinda bleeds over to the rest of the album. Undeservingly so, since there are a number of stand-out tunes that start to distinguishes themselves after a while. "Acid Storm" for instance is a great, brutal Deathrasher like the finest from their SoAm cousins,
"Divine Oracle" could have been a long-lost Agent Steel number - or rather 2 or 3 long-lost Agent Steel-numbers that have been cut up and then gruesomely jigsawed together again. "Producers Edge" is another great one, beginning with an exquisit rhythmic
piece in the lineage of Hatröss-era Voivod, then going into another relentless part of deathrashing merciless slaughter.
The rest all fall somewhere inbetween, for better ("Sinister At Sunrise") or worse ("Terrortaphobia") and I can't help wondering what level of Kült this album could have achieved with just a tiny bit of polishing in the studio and/or rehearsal room - or maybe even w/ a second guitarist?
While the original edition was quite limited (600 copies is a reoccuring number mentioned) its acquired-taste-nature limits the demand some, in turn making it not quite the top-rarity it could have been. Also, it was released on a CD+DVD set by the Chinese AreaDeath label in 2011, including 2 live shows, all recorded demo material and a 30-page booklet, which should more than please most of the Australian completists out there.