Thursday, July 14, 2011

DEATH STRIKE - Fuckin Death CD Reissue Review


DEATH STRIKE - Fuckin Death CD Reissue
Dark Descent Records
Genre: Death Metal
Rating: 4/5


About a year ago the lame-stream metal media finally learned that people were not listening to the things they were pushing and realized that there was an actual underground scene of bands playing old school death metal (aka: OSDM). Ever since they've been trying to play catch up to control the storyline until their benefactors (the big labels) could get a handle on things. One thing I'm starting to see are write ups about extremely obscure DM bands who never got their due. Well there's a reason for that and it's because most of those bands sucked. But that's not going to stop some labels from shoving out non essential reissue material in order to cash in. THIS REISSUE HERE IS NOT ONE OF THEM! In fact if ever there was a worthy contender for the reissue package it's this one here for many reasons.

Back in 1985 there was this four piece metal band (they were Death Thrash before the term was coined) from Chicago, Illinois called DEATH STRIKE who put out a demo titled Fuckin Death. That band, which featured the now well known Paul Speckmann on bass and vocals, would later change their name to MASTER who in 1990 released their full length self titled debut on Nuclear Blast Records. MASTER's debut contained a few older DEATH STRIKE cuts on it. I could say "and the rest is history" which most DM fans know since MASTER is a true classic in USDM but there's more. A year later Nuclear Blast took the Fuckin Death demo and released it. OK now that's just a basic history minus all the sordid details which are not worth your time here. For that this reissue dink has a booklet containing liner notes from Paul Speckmann. Along with that this reissue contains the original eight tracks from the 1991 Nuclear Blast edition but adds four never-before-released rehearsal tracks to the mix.

Now that you know the part of the story the question awaits. Why do you need this especially if you have MASTER's debut. Well if you're a old school cult collector than yes you might want this for the four extra rehearsal cuts; "Live for Free", "Pay to Die", "The Truth" and "Master". Personally I didn't think much of those tracks but it's better than a lot of repackaged reissues with a pair of extra throwaway "live" cuts tacked on the butt. Now for you new jacks hey this is where it all started. OSDM is the rage today but this is death thrash before it became bastardized, homogenized and sterilized. This is like listening to a pre-genre defined sound rough and raw. The pure hunger and aggression within these cuts is not fake. I highly recommend you pick up a copy of Fuckin Death.

Label: http://www.darkdescentrecords.com/


Myspace: http://www.myspace.com/deathstrikeusa


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