Vim Fuego Following up an amazing debut album is no easy task for any band. Debuts generally contain songs that the band has been perfecting for years up until their first album is recorded. After that, in many cases like Annihilator, Forbidden, Xentrix, Body Count and numerous others, the cupboard is bare. A weaker second album follows a strong debut, and everyone is disappointed. Not Exhorder.

Many fans of the band prefer 'The Law' to 'Slaughter In The Vatican', and with good reason. Where the first album was unbridled aggression vented in all directions, 'The Law' keeps organised religion squarely in the crosshairs.

Some of the sharp edges evident in the first album have been filed down. The unbridled aggression present on ‘Slaughter In The Vatican’ seemed more focused on ‘The Law’, still taking aim at organised religion, but with a little more subtlety. The guitar sound lost a little of the raw chainsaw quality, but is heavier, and fuller in the bottom end. Kyle Thomas' vocals have far more melody to them. That's not to say he sounds any less pissed off, but Thomas actually creates some singable melodies.

Exhorder were Spinal Tap–like when it came to bass players. To that end, guitarists LaBella and Ceravolo played all the bass on the first album, and all but one track on the second. Their new bass player, Franky Sparcello played an amazing slap bass backing track to "Un–Born Again", which was all he had time for, joining the band in the middle of recording. At the time, there was a big trend toward so–called "funk metal", but this didn't follow the trend. Far from being a plain bass track, slapped instead of picked, Sparcello runs up and down the fretboard with incredible dexterity, augmenting Chris Nail's jazz-trained thrash drumming. Unfortunately, that's all Sparcello ever recorded with Exhorder.

There are a number of highlights on this album. There is a hint at Kyle Thomas' post–Exhorder stoner/doom band Floodgate, in the form of an excellent cover of Black Sabbath's "Into The Void". "Unforgiven" is an exercise in dynamics, using pace and rhythm to excellent effect. Never a band afraid of doing something different, the final two tracks are an instrumental in "Incontinence", and "(Cadence Of) The Dirge" which is well, a dirge. It is a bleak, oppressive song, displaying the dark depths of hopelessness, sorrow and self–pity.

Lost in the flood of Floridan death metal and the emerging Seattle grunge explosion, Exhorder missed the recognition they deserved at the time, and self–destructed after the recording of 'The Law'. However, Exhorder are now fondly remembered, perhaps because the band quit with a solid body of only two albums behind them, and had not tarnished their reputation. There was no hint Exhorder were going to abandon metal, but there was the potential to further mix in jazz, funk, stoner, doom and any number of other elements. Who knows what would have happened.

UMUR The Law is the 2nd full-length studio album by American groove thrash metal act Exhorder. The album was released in March 1992 through Roadrunner Records. The Law was re-issued by Roadrunner Records in 2003 in a low price double CD package with Exhorder´s debut full-length studio album Slaughter in the Vatican (1990).

While the music on Slaughter in the Vatican was brutal thrash metal that besides the aggressive thrash metal vocals, was as close to death metal as you come without being death metal, the music on The Law is much more groove based and The Law is often, and rightly so, considered one of the seminal albums in the groove thrash movement. lead vocalist Kyle Thomas has a voice that´s pretty similar to the voice of Phil Anselmo ( Pantera) and Pantera is definitely a valid reference also when it comes to the groove based music. Now I know the band hate this comparison but there are simply too many obvious similarities between those two acts that I´ll risk my neck and make it anyway. While the quality of the tracks is generally very high, and I´m blown back in my seat more than one time because of the powerful aggressive music, there are unfortunately a couple of tracks that drag the album down just a bit. Exhorder flirt a bit too much with alternative metal in Unborn Again for my taste and they even incorporate slapbass, which usually is a big turn-off for me. Their cover of Into the Void by Black Sabbath doesn´t leave more than a slight impression either. Now as there are only 9 tracks on the album and two of them are sub par ( and Into the Void is even the longest track on the album), it will have some effect on my final rating.

The production is actually not that good, but strangely after a couple of minutes I seem to be adjusting and end up finding the sound allright. It´s especially the guitar sound, that sounds strange to my ears.

While The Law rightly should be called a seminal album in the groove thrash movement, my overall feeling about the album is actually that it sounds like a transitional album. The band try new things and the album is a bit inconsistent, which is rather typical for transitional albums. The problem here is that there never came a 3rd album, so we never learned what Exhorder could have transformed into. They disbanded after the album was released. A 3.5 star rating will do.