UMUR "Fool's Game" is the debut full-length studio album by US, San Francisco, Bay Area based thrash metal act Mordred. The album was released through Noise Records in 1989. Mordred was founded in 1985 right in the hotbed of US thrash metal in the Bay Area in San Francisco. Not content with playing "straight" thrash metal they soon started incorporating funk and alternative metal elements into their sound...

...which is already apparent on "Fool's Game" even though it is first and foremost a Bay Area sounding thrash metal release. Acts like Testament and Heathen could be mentioned as references but the list is long. You can call this generic or "straight sounding" but it´s both well played and, for the time, well produced. It´s the tracks "Every Day´s a Holiday" and the Rick James cover "Super Freak", that make "Fool's Game" stand out a bit from the crowd. Funky bass and the use of turntables were not something you regularly heard on thrash metal releases in the late eighties. Band´s like Suicidal Tendencies and Sacred Reich would also soon experiement with funky elements, but Mordred were innovators in that area.

"Fool's Game" is not the most memorable Bay Area thrash metal release from the late eighties, but it has probably influenced a great deal of other thrash metal artists to go in a more alternative direction, which a lot of acts did in the early- to mid nineties, thereby making it an interesting album in a historical context. As a listening experience it´s not bad either and I´d say a 3 - 3.5 star (65%) rating is warranted.