bonnek Upon its arrival on my favourite radio program in 1993, Screams and Whispers made quite an impression. Most of the songs are very convincing and best of all, it’s free. You can download it at quick speeds from their home site for nothing. Chances are you might also find it cheap second-hand. This eclectic gang of thrashers didn’t find themselves an audience in the speed metal dominated scene of their times, which is a bit of a shame.

Anacrusis plays a blend of industrial metal, progressive metal and thrash with some gothic overtones. A mix of Ministry, Metallica, Voivod and Killing Joke if you want to put band names on it. The vocals are mainly hoarse bellows similar to the great Jazz Coleman on Killing Joke’s 90’s albums, for some reason Kenn Nardi also does occasional extreme raspy screeches. Due to the Jazz Coleman vocals, the steady pace of the music and some psychedelic elements, they also remind me a lot of the more recent band Alchemist, one of my favourite recent metal flavours.

Recommended songs to check out are the 3 first standout tracks. Also the weird Division is interesting. The band also sits close to Prong here. It's not entirely consistent, so I will leave it at 3.5 stars, but this is truly a very unique and original album, way ahead of its time.

J-Man Suffering Hour, the debut album from thrash metal band Anacrusis, is a pretty important album in the thrash metal genre. It's nowhere near the importance of Slayer's Reign In Blood or Metallica's Master of Puppets, but Suffering Hour is a bit of an underground classic in the thrash metal genre. Even though I am a pretty big fan of late 80's thrash metal, Suffering Hour has never really impressed me. It shows a lot of potential, but a few big problems really destroy my enjoyment of this album.

As I've mentioned earlier, this is late 80's thrash metal in the vein of Slayer or Metallica, but this never reaches the high level of quality that those bands reached in the late 80's. First of all, Suffering Hour just isn't as memorable as either of those band's masterpieces. After I finished listening to this album I can only recall a few riffs, and that's always a big problem. I have a very hard time distinguishing all of the songs from each other because of the general lack of variation and memorable sections. There are a few exceptions, but generally it's hard for me to remember every song when I'm done with the album. I wish that the arrangements would have been a bit more varied. There is a limited amount of instruments on this album, and it makes the album feel linear and uninteresting by the end.

The four musicians on this album range in terms of quality. Mike Owen's drumming is pretty good; tight and fast. Not much more I could ask from a thrash metal drummer. The bass is mostly inaudible except for a few quieter parts, and that's a big problem. The two guitarists (Kevin Heidbreder and Kenn Nardi) are pretty great and really show their chops on Suffering Hour. Unfortunately, my biggest issue with this entire album is the vocals. While they aren't terrible, every now and again Kenn Nardi will do an odd, high pitched shriek that I find extremely annoying. Listen to Twisted Cross or and you will know what I mean. It sounds a bit like a dying bird to me. Needless to say it didn't impress me very much. When he sings normally or even goes rougher, he sounds great. It's just those screams that seam to appear in all of the songs that really annoy me.

As I've mentioned, the bass is generally inaudible. This obviously means that the production isn't very good. It's pretty standard for late 80's thrash metal, but I find it insufficient. It really detracts from the overall value.

Conclusion:

Suffering Hour is a rather poor debut from Anacrusis. They have never been one of my favorite thrash metal bands, and this album proves that. This is worth no more than 2 stars. If you're into Anacrusis and/or are a huge fan of early thrash metal, this might be worth getting. Keep in mind, however, that I am a big fan of thrash metal and I don't find much enjoyment from this album.

2 stars.