Japanese bands have always been quite the cult favourites. Due to an incessant obsession with outdoing each other in 7” releases (reference: Sabbat, obviously) and fickle nature when it comes to record labels, it has become an almost impossible task to be a Japanese metal completist, and bands like Sabbat, Abigail, Metalucifer and Sigh have thus become names that are bandied around not only because of their awe-inspiring music, but also their elusiveness. Enter Terror Squad, perhaps another stick in the fire. Supposedly this yakuza has already put up a 7” and a CD before this one, and it can only be certain that they’ll follow suit and frustrate us with a barrage of limited EPs. And you’d probably search them out too, because this is yet more inspired blackened thrash of a most top-notch nature, possessing the honesty and passion that you’ve come to expect from a scene that can seemingly do no wrong.

It is easy enough to write this off as more retro-thrash, but this is so passionate and goddamn original that it is leagues ahead of the stale Euro-retro-thrash movement. Unashamedly metal in much the same way as Sweden’s Gehennah are, you *know* that a band that name their songs “Disco Bloody Disco” and then rattle off a whole paragraph of lyrics naming bands they’re influenced by in a song has to be M-E-T-A-L.

Reference: :
“Attack the DJ Booth oh yeah! Burn the records of Bee Geez
Play the Venom Records ‘Welcome To Hell’ !
Sodom! Satan! Angel Witch!!! ‘Pure Filth’!
Mighty Warfare! Voivod! Hellhammer! Celtic Frost! Kreator!
At War! Don’t Forget Artillery! Don’t ya know? Go fuck yaself, poser!”

And then we come to the music itself. I dare say that Terror Squad rival Sabbat in pure blackened thrash adrenaline. Touching upon everything from Venom (some riffs in Order Of The Lone Wolf cry out Welcome To Hell), Kreator (Disco Bloody Disco displays spurts of Flag of Hate), Slayer, Razor, Possessed and perhaps every other mid-80’s thrash revelation you can come up with, they mix this distinctly old-school vibe with such style and effortless creativity and thus come up with an entirely different hybrid and sound, instead of lifting liberally like so many stale Euro-retro bands have done (Inferno or Aura Noir, anyone?). For the thrash-deprived, what we’re talking about here is scintillating, electric vibrator style solos, tongue-in-cheek vocal exclamations and straight- ahead, no-nonsense percussive battery. Truthfully however, Terror Squad retain a very contemporary sounding sonority along with all this old school integrity, and that’s a quality that is oh-so-rare in today’s mimic-the-Teutonic-thrash- band tomfoolery.

What else can I say but urge you to buy this amazingly honest display of all the things we’ve come to love and hold dear in the fields of metal? Finally, there’s a new black/thrash band on the block to rival Sabbat and Abigail. Thank Beelzebub.

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© 2000 equimanthorn