Desire

Generally speaking, DESIRE was in the upper-league of solid & proper HM bands from the Malaysian 80's and this debut is no exception, but for a couple of reasons I'm not sure I would rate it an absolute must-buy for every HM fan out there. By Malay standards this is a lot more crude and stumbling an affair than we're used to, frankly to the degree that I'm a bit surprised they got to the album-releasing stage this early in their career, and on a major label like Polydor no less! 

In short, "Sumpitan Senja" isn't really album-good, but there's no reason we can't pretend it's a pretty damn cool demo, right? The sloppy rhythm section is the main problem here. On the upside it adds some rough & chaotic flavour to tracks like the fast and aggressive "Kekejaman" and the catchy, NWOBHM'ish "Topeng Wajah", both of which contain some great, youthful vocal wailings and harmonies - definitely the 2 highlights of the album. On other more ambitious numbers like "Sumpitan Senja" and "Bersyukur" it just feels like we're at an amateur-hour/after-school show, politely headnodding and clapping our hands because 'at least it's Heavy, right?'.

For an album that features no less than 6 proper Metal tunes in contrast to only 4 ballads (some which I'll agree are of the quite tolerable, heavier sort) it's certainly not in the Malaysian bottom half as far as albums are concerned, but I strongly recommend you'll checkout their superior 2nd LP before you attempt to hunt down this one.