Description

Abomination was founded in Chicago, Illinois in 1987, a time when thrash metal infected every other genre on the heavy music scene. Thus the band’s style, deriving from crushing death metal, involved thrash, but also hardcore and punk elements, all conjoining in one tasty mixture of technique and aggression. But this was no accidental blend – the founders of Abomination took out a lot from their other projects to form the ultimate metal juggernaut, bringing sheer devastation into the metal world. Definitely the most known member of Abomination is Paul Speckmann, the legendary bassist and vocalist, founder of the cult bands Master and Death Strike. Speckmann is to this day considered one of the most prominent figures of the underground metal scene, who helped in shaping the entire death metal genre as we know it. For some reason, Paul dropped from the radar screen in the early 1990s, before resurfacing in 1999. He left a solid, if not always impressive, body of work. While Master is his best–remembered legacy, Abomination seems to have been consigned to the bargain bin of history. It shouldn't have been. You see, Abomination pisses all over Master from a great height. Master was messy but influential proto–Death Metal, never quite finding one identity to stick to. Abomination was solid sub–death thrash, too heavy for the average Metallica fan, too serious for the average Anthrax fan, and too intellectual for the average Megadeth fan. Abomination dealt great slabs of songs, as noisy as a shipyard building a battleship. The three–piece band generated this huge sound with a minimum of fuss. It is probably the lack of fuss that counted against the band in the long run. Aside from opener ‘Blood From Oil’, the rest of the album is unremarkable, in the sense that you know you've just received a damn good dose of thrash, it's just that you can't remember any of it. It's like going to a football match where your team scores in the first minute, then plays out for a 1–0 win– it's the result you wanted, but getting there was not as exciting as it could have been. ‘Blood For Oil’ though, is the kind of stomping, relentless opener bands like Nuclear Assault and Sodom managed less often than they would have liked. Taking snippets of Gulf War news bulletins, Speckman questioned the motives and results of the short–lived desert war, asking if oil is really worth the human toll, on both sides, of armed conflict. Sounds kind of topical, doesn't it. Elsewhere, it seems Paul Speckman wasn't too keen on the country he lives in. ‘Oppression’ asks if there really is freedom in American society. ‘Pull The Plug’ is not a cover of the Death song, but rather a diatribe aimed at drunk drivers. ‘Industrial Sickness’ examines the damage industry causes to people and environment. Yep, America is sick, and little seems to have changed since 1991. While not an album to impress a non–believer as to how good thrash can be, there's still plenty on offer here — no frills music played with conviction, and thought provoking, politically motivated lyrics. A nice piece of history. Abomination’s name was never going to go down in history alongside their more creative and commercially successful contemporaries, but their albums are still great examples of early death metal in its genesis, before the sound became fairly standardised and repetitive. Paul Speckmann is a great frontman and impressive songwriter, his lyrics following the usual anarchistic agenda but managing to incorporate a large degree of irony and empathy, and it’s a shame he wasn’t a greater presence in the field alongside greats such as Chuck Schuldiner. Track listing: 1. Blood For Oil 2. They're Dead 3. Pull The Plug 4. Will They Bleed 5. Inustrial Sickness 6. Soldier 7. Kill or Be Killed 8. Oppression