Taking more than a handful of inspiration from Metallica's first album ("Kill 'Em All"), Nuclear Assault was the brainchild of Dan Lilker (ex-Anthrax / S.O.D. / Brutal Truth and probably a few dozen other bands I can't remember right now). What I recall most about this album ("Game Over") was how thin it sounded when it was first released - the guitars in particular were horribly weak sounding. Because of this fact, I never really got into Nuclear Assault, although even back then some of their material managed to shine through the shoddy mixing.

Well, it's roughly 12 years later, and I've just managed to snag myself a copy of this on CD (with "The Plague" stuck on as a bonus to boot), and quite to my surprise this sounds astonishingly good - perhaps even better than when it first came out. I believe a lot of this has to do with the fact that the guitar sound seems a hell of a lot thicker these days - perhaps this was remixed? Either that, or the original's weak sound was due to Combat using really cheap grade vinyl for the LP's original release...regardless, the result is a much more powerful sounding record, although there are a few spots ("Live Suffer Die" being one of them) where the over-trebely guitar does return momentarily. As I stated earlier on, this album takes quite an influence from "Kill 'Em All" era Metallica (then again, what didn't back then?), especially in the rhythmic patterns used, and even the vocal phrasings are quite similar to those Hetfield used to employ - but this brings me to one of the album's possible contention points: John Connelly's vocals. Quite a lot of people had a really hard time coming to turns with his whiney, high pitched style (Malphas goes so far as to described him as sounding like Sam Kinison), but personally I don't mind it as it lends the album an aura of classic metal (in the sense that a lot of classic 80s metal had some pretty "unique" vocalists) - still, I feel obliged to point this out as his "screaming cat in heat" style might turn a lot of people off. Another element of this band that might become an irritation factor for some are the crossover/hardcore elements to be found within it - I'm speaking in particular of tracks such as "Hang The Pope", "My America", and "(You Figure It Out)" (formerly "Buttfuck"). One has to remember that this was released in the heyday of crossover, when ever other metal band was trying to incorporate hardcore/punk elements into their music (the same goes for a lot of the hardcore/punk bands who were also trying to incorporate metal influences into their stuff). Still, as far as this type of thing is concern, Nuclear Assault handled it in a better way than most - instead of incorporating the two styles into any one song, they would write specific "crossover" tracks...this means that one can simply skip the above mentioned tracks and there's no crossover element to be detected (a good approach in my opinion).

Even with these "bad" points in mind, I'd recommend this release to anyone who's a fan of 80s American thrash metal (especially the Metallica/Anthrax fans among you). I've no idea if this CD is widely available - I would assume not as it's on Combat, but I've seen it listed on a few of the larger mail order houses on the net, so perhaps someone has bought the rights to it. You might also have noticed how I've made almost no mention of "The Plague" EP that's to be found on this pressing - that's because it really isn't worth discussing. It's basically more of the same, although nowhere near as interesting - "Cross Of Iron" (the last track) is the only real high point, and although "The Plague" has a much thicker sound, the only real reason to pick this up is for the debut...

© 1999 chorazaim