Description

Black vinyl with printed innersleeve

With the glut of throwback retro-Thrash acts seeking to re-capture the 80s with varying degrees of success, leave it to a bunch of old farts (like yours truly) to succeed in a way few of these youngsters are capable of. Sure, plenty of respectable acts these days mix their trashcan punch from all the right bottles: Speed Metal, politics, moronic humour, pointy but somewhat shitty logos; but leave it to some oldsters who were there to seize on sounds that few revivalists lock on to. Enter Cerebral Fix with “Disaster Of Reality”, their first release in 24 years. The element of authenticity they absolutely nail though is ‘sloppiness’. Wait, hear me out…thrashers these days all pray to the altar of the speedy riff, and that’s great, but what’s lost in the shuffle is that for every Nuclear Assault or D.R.I. there were plenty of bands from the early Thrash days (before the term “crossover” had ever been uttered) who took a more ham-fisted approach to metallizing Punk Rock. Cerebral Fix is like a blast straight from 1986; warts, troglodytic riffage, production that sounds like it’s already a couple of boombox dupes old – the works. This is a super-fun release that conjures up memories of so many twelfth-generation dupes that were traded through the back-pages of magazines. Once your ears adjust to the crowded mix – the kick drum often forces the guitars to drop out, for example – you’re treated to a raucous romp through nostalgia from a period you likely didn’t witness! It’s all here, a song about moshing (“Mosh Injury”), a song about skateboarding, or rather, not being able to skate because you’re too goddamn old (“Skate Fear”), even a paean to Thrash itself, à la Arthur Conley’s “Sweet Soul Music” where they name-check a bunch of bands (“Felted Cross”)! Also, peppered throughout are brash political screeds about war and the environment. It sure is nice to be reminded of those days when Metal dudes tuned into what that weird spiky-haired kid was listening to, and the mohawk-and-combat-boots set discovered practicing and palm-mutes.

Track list:
1. Justify
2. Mosh Injury
3. Crucified World
4. Realities Of War
5. Skate Fear
6. Reality Pill
7. Dear Mother Earth
8. Dead Cities
9. Never Say Never Again
10. Felted Cross
11. Inside My Guts
12. Untitled Mystery Track