Time Signature All are dead...

Genre: old school death / black / thrash metal

The music on this release is very retro, and I think that some younger listeners may have to get used to the old school sound. Although Psycho primarily draw on traditional subgenres within metal and cannot be said to be very innovative, they do ensure that there is variation on this album as they successfully blend thrash riffage, old fashioned (in the positive sense) guitar solos, blastbeats, simple (again in the positive sense) death metal patterns and traditional metal configurations.

This stuff is raw an primitive, and it works brilliantly most of the time, but there are also elements which I find a bit silly, and their satanic horror lyrics is one such element - "Meat Slit Grinder", "Revenge of the Raging Whore", and "Dr. Satan" are probably aimed more at emotional and angry teenagers than an old bugger such as myself (I do like the title "Dr. Satan" though).

But, if you ignore the lyrics and other silly horror elements, then this is a pretty good release. I like the music itself, which is raw, primitive and retro but at the same time very varied - and perhaps my comment on lack of innovation above is actually imprecise, because their blending of extreme subgenres with more traditional and melodic elements could, if they continue down that road, in the future prove to be a very unique Psycho sound.

In all, this is a fine metal release which should appeal to fans of old school death, thrash and black metal. If you like Satanic horror lyrics, then you might be interested in this release, too.

Vehemency You don’t hear Singaporean bands playing a frenetic mixture of old school black, death, thrash and heavy metal with horror aesthetics everyday, and now that we have Psycho to prove its existence, I am personally quite content - for many reasons.

Putting on their debut album Pain Addict Pigs and hearing the first sounds after the exorcising intro, the listener is introduced to the filthy old school atmosphere reeking of rotting flesh. Catchy and chugging riffage, powerful drumming, and the vocals, the vocals! Penny Torture sounds really good spewing out his filthy lyrics in somewhat high-pitched screams full of abomination - lower growls appear occasionally, too. Frantic guitar solos appear in many corners of the album, ensuring that you can’t get much more metal than this.

The fluctuation between influences make Pain Addict Pigs an interesting and enduring experience: where ”Meat Slit Grinder” and ”Dr. Satan” evidently flirt with butchering death metal elements, ”Mater Lachrymarum…Mother of Tears” brings in some epic heavy metal screams. ”Revenge of the Raging Whore” ventures to surprisingly ’progressive’ and melodic grounds, being kind of an odd bird in the album but fitting in well, nonetheless.

This - old school metal with its boundaries - is not an area where people usually do anything extremely innovative, but it doesn’t take away the fact that Pain Addict Pigs is convincingly crushing. I’m not usually the biggest listener of this kind of metal yet am able to enjoy this album very well, even if there are moments of slight dullness to be found here too, as the final track ”Demon Deathtrance” starts to be too much the same as the tracks before it. Otherwise, there’s a lot of great riffs and overall morbid atmosphere to be found from this half an hour experience that is wholeheartedly recommended to thrash / death / black metal old schoolers. They can add at least a half a star more to my rating, most likely.