Dr. Shrinker (USA) - "Wedding the Grotesque" demo, 1989

When one thinks of death metal in the late 1980s, there are a few hotspots that come to mind. Florida, and Sweden are among the most popular, but several other locations had excellent scenes as well - New York, Poland, Finland, the Netherlands, France, and the list can go on. The midwest is one of the more overlooked areas in the United States when it comes to death metal. Many of these bands never really made it past demo stage, and even the most successful and influential band from the area (Chicago's Master) took more than half a decade to release a full length. Dr. Shrinker were one of the many bands from this region who maintained a sizeable cult following throughout the years, but remained largely ignored by the growing death metal scene.

Forming in 1987, the band released three official demos in their short career. The first demo, "Recognition" was a very basic, primitive, sloppy and crude recording. Good in its own right, it did not really have the personality or charm to distinguish it from more competant bands who played in a similar vein. Their final demo, "The Eponym" shows a very cleanly produced band going for a more technical death metal sound, not too far off from what Death would be doing on "Human", and unfortunately he clean production and overcomposed songs killed most of the raw energy the band had.

"Wedding the Grotesque", however, is their Goldilocks album. Not too basic, not too produced, but just right in the middle, acting as the best of both worlds. Rather long for a demo, 12 tracks in 47 minutes, "Wedding the Grotesque" is easily the band's masterpiece, and one of the best death metal recordings to come out of the 1980s. Starting off with a sample from Hellraiser 2, the band immediately kicks into high gear with their brand of death metal, which rarely lets up for the remainder of the demo. The guitar tone on here is extremely filthy and savage and lends a great deal of atmosphere to these songs, and the vocals are a unique high pitched shriek that does not sound like any other band I have heard. Combined with the unique delivery, the vocals are often coupled with over the top reverb, echo and delay effects in key points which accentuate the eccentric nature of the music. Its unfortunate that the band cleaned up their sound and went with a more 'professional' approach on their next demo, as this style of production really highlights a certain insanity that many bands were unable to capture.

The songs themselves retain a simplistic approach to their composition, and the riffs are very well placed and keep the listener engaged without getting overly repetitive. Drumming also lends to this, with some excellently timed fills and hits that greatly add to the music, something many drummers tend to avoid in favor of tedious double bass runs.

Dr. Shrinker is certainly competant at playing fast death metal, but really shines when they favor a slower demo, creating a very morbid and brooding sound. The band does display a certain sense of humor, in both the lyrics and their selection of samples (the best being one of Charlie Manson spouting off gibberish), but it does not get in the way of the overall dark feel of the music.

Necroharmonic has reissued the band's three demos on a CD called "Grotesque Wedlock", which includes lots of awesome flyers that contain some great artwork in them. The only material missing from this discgraphy CD is a rehearsal song called "Our Necropsy" that appears on a split 7" with Nunslaughter - an excellent slower track which would have fit right in on "Wedding the Grotesque". While this demo is slightly off-kilter death metal that might not sound much alike other primitive and simplistic death metal bands like Master or Massacre, its certainly an underground classic that deserves greater praise and recognition then it has received over the years.

Mondocane (Ita) - "Project One" LP, 1990

"Crossover" is one of my least favorite names for a musical genre. Starting off as what happens when punks slow their music down and start to write heavier riffs in the style of contemporary thrash metal bands, the first crossover bands (D.R.I., S.O.D., Suicidal Tendencies, etc) bridged the gap between two hostile audiences that were playing styles of music more similar to each other than either side of the fence would probably care to admit. D.R.I. and Suicidal both started off as a fast hardcore bands and S.O.D. contained both members of the NYHC and New York metal community.

Crossover itself is useful for describing what these bands did for music rather than the actual music itself. If "Speak English or Die" were recorded by four guys with shaved heads and Agnostic Front tattoos, it would most likely be seen as an ultraheavy NYHC album as opposed to the penultimate crossover record. Instead the lineup consists of three guys with long hair who played in Anthrax. Since almost all metal bands since the NWOBHM movement (and many during said movement) were musically influenced by punk in some way or another, crossover as a term to describe a band's music quickly loses its meaning and instead becomes more of a descriptor of a cultural movement. Bands like Hellhammer, Slaughter, Repulsion, Slayer, Kreator, Sarcofago and Metallica all had a great deal of punk influence in their sound, aesthetic and attitude, but it would not make sense to call any crossover. Conversely, hardcore bands such as Sheer Terror, Breakdown, Deathside, and Tetsu Arrey had a heavier aesthetic, but it would also be erroneous to label them as anything other than firmly rooted in the hardcore scene.

Such is the case of Mondocane. Formed as a supergroup between two of Italy's best black/thrash bands, Necrodeath and Schizo (both logos are prominently featured on the album's cover), and named after some of Italy's most outrageous exploitation films, "Project One" is a manic thrash metal album which is constantly labelled as crossover for reasons which I am still rather unclear on. While Italy had a rather vibrant and large hardcore scene during the 1980s, "Project One" musically has nothing in common with what bands like C.C.M., Raw Power or Negazione were doing, nor were Schizo or Necrodeath in any related to the hardcore scene. If anything, Schizo's song "Nazi and Proud" featured on both of their first two demos would have alienated themselves from the Italian punks.

Both Necrodeath and Schizo started off releasing sloppy and nasty demos that are classics in the mid 80s black metal scene. By the time they were releasing full length albums they had tightened and cleaned up their sound, and instead sounded more like the heavy thrash which was typical of their German allies. Mondocane's sound isn't really that far off from a blend between both band's late 80s output; the vocals are delivered in the exact same fashion as "Main Frame Collapse", and many of the riffs would not be out of place on either album. The song structures alternate between hyperspeed, almost death metal in tone riffs and slower mosh oriented riffs typical of late 80s thrash bands. What separates this recording from the glut of bands doing similar things is the rather chaotic approach to composition; riffs are totally across the board and jump into one another without any sort of warning or attempt at clean flow. In the hands of lesser talented bands, this can come across as a mismatch or a bad cut and paste job, but here works in the bands favor in creating a breakneck and pummeling assault on the listener that never gets boring. The core of the band consists of three members, but all seven guys from both Necrodeath and Schizo eventually end up playing on the album in some form or another, which adds to the dynamic nature of these songs.

In comparison to both Necrodeath's and Schizo's late 80s albums, "Project One" has a rather slick and clean production job; the drums in particular sound extremely clean. Fortunately the band delivers an extremely energetic performance, and the more produced sound does not take away any of the aggressive elements of the Mondocane's music. The song titles would indicate a brand certain "wacky" thrash like Wehrmacht or Spazztic Blur, but fortunately the album is completely free of jokey musical passages. It is probably these song titles as well as the Exploited cover of "Fuck the U.S.A." (here changed to "Fuck the U.S.L." - about soccer?) which would lend to the miscategorization of this as crossover. While the Exploited cover is by far the most minimalistic song on the album, it still has a very metal feel to it, and fits in with the rest of the album quite nicely.

As far as I know, this has only been released on vinyl and has yet to be reissued by anyone, which is unfortunate as it would appeal to anyone into the heavier thrash bands in the 80s. Fans of Necrodeath or Schizo should especially take note, as this really does not deviate too far from what either band was doing, and it is clear from this recording that those guys had a lot of fun making some great heavy music together. Just don't expect this to sound like "Speak English or Die".