Toxic Holocaust - Hell On Earth (2005) LP Relapse Records

Toxic Holocaust are one of the few recent thrash bands who get it right - stripped down, immediate thrash, without bells and whistles, without anything added to the mix. It's not modern thrash - it's late 1980's thrash made in 2005.

I saw Toxic Holocaust open for The Possessed and by the time their set was over, I was rushing to the merch booth to pick stuff up - only to find they had packed it up as nothing was selling. I think if they stayed open for longer, they would have found a lot of new fans clamoring for gear.

After the show, I bought every one of their records and was blown away to find that Toxic Holocaust is one guy - Joel Grind, who, at least on the first few records, played all the instruments and recorded the album by himself.




Every song on Hell On Earth is great - raw, unfettered thrash. No pretense. If you like this one track, you'll like the whole catalog of what Joel and Toxic Holocaust has done, I absolutely guarantee it. Plus, cover art by Ed Repka? You know this has to be good.

Return To Forever - Hymn Of The Seventh Galaxy (1973) LP Polydor

I grew up with a lot of Jazz-Fusion in the house - Jeff Lorber et al - and as a youngster into '80's pop and then '80's hip-hop and late '80's metal, the Jazz-Fusion thing didn't really take my by storm. As it was, it was my dad's music and our relationship when I was a kid was strained. I was a difficult kid and my dad was a difficult guy and we were naturally adversarial. It wasn't until my mid-twenties that we started to reconnect - after I had done a good bit of growing up.

He bought me The Jeff Lorber Collection on CD and so many of the tracks brought back memories of a comfortable house and what I have come to call 'cerebral Sundays' - ones you spend reflecting and thinking rather than late brunch and drinking. Not that its a religion or anything, but I like Sundays to be about chilling hard and reflecting. And West Wing episodes at night.

I bought quite a few Jeff Lorber and Westher Report records over the years and only recently started listening to fusion on Sundays again with Linda when we are zipping around town doing errands and drinking coffee.

Chick Corea featured on some Lorber recordings (most notably Soft Space) and was the main reason I started to look at Return To Forever. I picked up a few records, but this, their third album has easily become my favorite.

It's more Jazz-Rock and Funk than true Fusion, but whatever you term it, it's fantastic. The songs are well-crafted and driving, moody without being too demanding like many Weather Report songs (heavy horn stabs, fast-paced solos) and have a cool kind of space-rock-jazz thing happening, like Hawkwind-meets-jazz.


The titular track is one of the best on the album and has a heavy prog element and tremendous playing. The tone and sound of the guitar and bass on this track have that late 1960's feel - fuzzy, heavy with that distinct electric organ pulse.

Most of the other tracks on the record are a bit more laid back and mello, especially the last two on the record, 'Space Circus Parts 1 & 2' and 'The Game Maker', which does pick up at the end.

Like most Jazz-Fusion, this record can be found on the cheap and this one was bought at Dusty Groove here in Chicago, along with quite a few other fusion records on the same trip. Get some coffee and chill hard with this one.

Spirit Caravan - So Mortal Be/Undone Mind (2002) 45 Tolotta Records

Wino has fronted some damn good bands - the legendary Saint Vitus, stoner/desert rock supergroup Shrinebuilder, The Obsessed and this, probably my favorite project of his, Spirit Caravan.

Spirit Caravan is a bit more heavy and laid back than Saint Vitus and The Obsessed and are more about simple riffs and heavy tone than any of his other projects - at least that's how I think of them.


This 45 is awesomely heavy, with the opening riff of 'So Mortal Be' just laying down the perfect stoner vibe with Scott's distinctive vocals soaring over the music. It's rare that a good heavy stoner vibe comes off without being too slow or too heavy - Spirit Caravan seems to get this balance just right.

'Undone Mind' is a bit heavier and more gruff, but definitely has the same vibe and tone and almost the same feel to the riff, but it gets your head nodding just the same.

Both tracks are available on The Last Embrace, a compilation of a bunch of Spirit Caravan's records and a great starting place for those interested in the band. This 45 was an impulse buy at Zion's Gate last time I was in Seattle.

Loss For Words - Prey (1989) LP Death/Metal Blade

Thrash bands in the late 1980's seemed to come out of nowhere and every metal magazine of the day had tons of ads for thrash demo tapes and new LP's which almost totally usurped any other form of metal. Kinda like grunge only a few years later, labels reached out to sign almost everyone they could and lots of bands released one or maybe two records and faded into obscurity forever.

Loss For Words was definitely one of those bands. Formed in 1987, they were signed by Metal Blade/Death Records shortly there after and released their first and only full-length record in 1989, Prey. They disbanded in 1990 and this LP was there only official release.

Unlike psych and prog records of the 1970's, obsure thrash records don't really command huge premiums, which is a shame really as it wouyld keep alot of these bands in the sight lines of serious collectors.





That being said, Prey is a great album without the rarity attached. It's dense, crossover/thrash with fast, short songs and raw vocals. They aren't breaking any new ground, but deliver a stripped down, west coast thrash thing very well.

The CD has been rereleased and is pretty easy to find on Amazon. This LP copy was bought at Zion's Gate in Seattle, WA and looks like a copy of the original record with a 'Metal Blade Original '80's' tag on it - like it was backstck they dug up and rereleased as there are no changes to the artwork or the date of release on the back cover.

Sleep - Holy Mountain (1992) LP Earache Records/Kreation Records

It would be damn near impossible to explain just how much I love Sleep and just how much this album blew me away the first time I heard it. I can remember the first notes of the record, the lead in riff to "Dragonaut" with the airy punch of a tube amp on 10 and the fuzzy, deep, resonant tone of a thunderous monster awoken. It's a landmark recording for the stoner/desert rock genre, but it's also just a damn great album. It lacks the slow plodding of Electric Wizard and the growl of Bongzilla, but it is big on tone and simple, Sabbathy riffs.

This was sent in to Earache as a demo tape and they signed the band on hearing it and put it out as they got it - simple and rough and god damn beautiful.



The video for "Dragonaut" is awesomely representative of the band, with its black-and-white presentation and jamming-in-a-garage esthetic. Everyone is so into their own thing, I'm not sure if anyone even looks at the camera.

The rest of the record is also stellar, with the standouts for me being "The Druid", "Aquarian", Holy Mountain" and "Inside the Sun", but really, every track is fantastic with Matt Pike and Al Cisnero's thunderous tones and Chris Haikus' incredibly varied and hammering drums.



"Aquarian" is a great representation of Sleeps simple, pounding riffs and kiiller tone, spaced-out vocals and definite Sabbath leanings. It's one of my fav's on the record and one of their best live - especially as its a good, slow headbanging track, perfect for the stoners and a great relaxing to just chill hard to with some heavy rock.



You could probably tell that I'm a huge fan of Sleep from the fact that I have a separarte blog dedicated to the live bootlegs which I have been collecting for sometime. There's a few tracks from this period on the live boots that were never released on an original studio LP and its a damn shame as they are truely killer tracks - "Hot Lava Man" and "Sonic Titan". Download the 10/17/1992 and 2/21/1992Gilman boots for both.

This version is the Kreation Records repress that came out in 2007 which I picked up from Zion's Gate Records in Seattle, WA - home of Kreation Records! They also had a vinyl copy of Sleep's Volume One album for something like $150 - which I had to pass on, but damn, it's seriously tempting...

Nuclear Assault - Game Over (1986) LP Combat Records

In 1989, I was 13 years old and got turned onto metal and early punk in equal doses, but really clicked with thrash and metal bands of the day. I watched Headbanger's Ball with abandon and me and my friends compared bands we discovered there and in Metal Maniacs, a great metal magazine of the day. Nuclear Assault released 1989's Handle With Care and produced a video for it with the band playing in front of an oil rig in the desert and that, along with the crushing sound of Dan Liker's bass made this album a must get for me. I bought it, got super into the band.

This is their first LP, 1986's Game Over, which is a searingly fast and direct thrash metal record. It's a great first record and its easy to see how Combat signed them after hearing a few of these tracks of their earlier demo tape. It's 13 tracks compacted into 33 minutes of sheer speed and aggression. The cover is as unrelenting and brash as the music with nearly day-glo colors and apocalyptic imagery and as a 13-year-old, I was drawn to it like afternoon cartoons after school.

As with a lot of cassettes I had back in the day, I listened to it religiously, but it never took over the top spot as Handle With Care became one of my favorite records.

There are a number of classic tracks here like "Live, Suffer Die", "Betrayal" and "Sin," all standouts and all excellent.



"Sin" is a great standout track and whenever I listen to it, I remember the whole of the genre and how fresh and exciting it was compared to glam metal and commercial metal. It really gave me a good understanding of the underground and how music not on the radio could still be amazing and moving, which was a bit of a revelation to a 13-year-old.


"Betrayal" is still one of my fav's on this record and its an anthemic piece, good for singing along with after some imagined slight, but mostly just awesome at anytime.



There's few times when I feel the need to have three youtube links, but I couldn't leave off " Hang The Pope," a Liker vocalized track and a humorous mid-album excursion and one of those songs that always seemed to make it onto a metal comp cassette you'd make for a friend.

Bought at Laurie's, which just goes to show they are the kings of having just about anything in their New Release bin.

Possessed - The Eyes Of Horror (1987) EP Relativity/Combat Records

For a band who only released three records - 1985's Seven Churches, 1986's Beyond The Gates and this stellar EP - Possessed made a huge impact on the death/thrash/crossover scene in the 1980's. They have been referred to as the first death metal band by many, but I really feel like they did their own thing - combinding thrash with darker themes, using the raw skate punk/crossover sound as their platform, mixing it with great speedy riffs.

Possessed are much more melodic than their contemporaries, faster than Metallica and have a vocal edge that is super raw and gutteral, more akin to skate punk than metal.



As a kid, I was a huge fan of Possessed's Seven Churches and its super-rough production and fast-paced thrash. I actually had this record on cassette along with Beyond The Gates and didn't really gell with it. Coming back to it later in life, I find that this is easily my favorite of their releases.

Unfortunately, the band broke up shortly after the release of this EP and three years later singer Jeff Becerra was shot and paralized from the waist down. They did reform in the early 1990's briefly and then disbanded again. Luckily for us, they are again reformed with Jeff who performs in a wheelchair, which does nothing to diminish the power of them live.

I got a chance to see Possessed last summer they just floored me. My fiancee Linda bought me the Seven Churches hoodie and bought herself a girly Possessed T with the logo in rhinestones. No shit. Awesome.

I highly recommend any fans of death metal and early thrash to check this out. It's a bit cleaner in terms of production than Seven Churches, but damn powerful.