As a lot of you know Exciter is a Canadian thrash metal outfit. In the time that the original album came out, there was still a division between speed metal (the more melodic version of thrash, with most of the time vocalists who sing in the higher regions) and thrash metal. Exciter was considered a speed metal band back then. Over the years this division isn’t there anymore and nowadays the tag speed metal is sometimes used for happy powermetal bands like Helloween. So for the sake of putting the band in the correct box, I’ll call this album a thrash metal album, though it’s in no way similar to the efforts of bands like Slayer.

 

A big question that pops up in my head when reviewing a re-release: does it stand the test of time? In the case of this album, I am afraid to say that it doesn’t. Nowadays thrash metal bands blow this one out of its socks. The production clearly stands in the way for this album to make any waves whatsoever.

 

Besides the poor production (which is something you can expect when re-releasing a twenty year old album), the material doesn’t convince me one bit. Songs like ‘Scream Bloody Murder’ and ‘O.T.T.´ make me want to scream along, but those are the exceptions. I even cannot imagine that I would have picked up this album twenty years ago. If I compare this disc not only with the big thrash bands of those days, but also with the more obscure bands like Cyclone Temple, this just doesn’t cut it. The song material is to weak and the vocals also aren’t convincing. It sometimes even seems that Rob is out of breath.