Time Signature Too fuckin' much...

Genre: quasi-tech thrash metal

French thrash metallers Lankmar had a sort of under-the-radar career going on in which the sometimes peeped out of from the underground into the mainstream, but they never quite made it.

Their demo "Prejudiced" from 1989 really show a band with potential, but who also constituted their own biggest obstacle. Musically, we are dealing with semi-technical thrash metal with nods in the direction of Watch Tower and Realm and what appears to be a massive influence from Testament and Target. The five tracks are thus very aggressive and technical enough to both challenge and impress the even the more seasoned thrash metal fans of that era. Juxtaposing straight up and crushing aggressive thrash metal riffs with slightly more off and at time oddball riffs and figures, this demo offers both food for thought and fuel for moshing.

The weak point of the album is the vocals. Well, the vocals in themselves are not bad. They have the form of a combination of yelling and singing, not unlike early Xentrix. It is just that the lyrics are very wordy and this makes the vocal delivery come across very cluttered, which can be slightly annoying- which is definitely the case in 'Taken by Force' and to some extent in 'Prejudiced'. The vocal delivery is not so much a problem in 'Illusion World' and 'Too Muckin' Fuch' but these tracks do suffer from lyrics that could perhaps have been reworked one more time (or thrashed and replaced with something less stupid as in the case of 'Too Mucking Fuch' which is just a narrative of some binge trip downtown or something). To be honest, I think that the lyrics are sub par in all tracks, which is probably why I prefer the instrumental La Nouvelle'.

That being said, musically, this release is very well put together, and fans of tech thrash metal are - if they can find it, of course - likely to really enjoy the musical aspect of the demo.