Razor - Violent Restitution

Razor - Violent Restitution
Released by: Relapse Records
Released on: May 5^th, 2015.
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Canada might not be the first place you think of when talking about eighties thrash metal, but Razor, who originally hail from Guelph, Ontario, absolutely deserve their place alongside the typically discussed Bay Area heavyweights. Formed in 1984, they've had a bit of a revolving door of players with guitar slinger Dave Carlo standing as the sole original member at this point, but despite breakups and healthy issues he's kept it going for three decades now. Relapse has done the right thing by reissuing a few of their late eighties/early nineties albums originally released by long gone Fringe Product. Violent Restitution came out in 1988, and now it lives again!

The album starts off with an instrumental called The Marshall Arts, and it stands to reason that those stacks are set to full volume. Two minutes and forty-five seconds later Hypertension blasts through the speakers, it's reckless and it's mean and it's nasty. Chainsaws blaze to nice effect. The guitars are way up front in the mix while Stace “Sheepdog” McLaren's vocals sounds as tortured and painful as you'd want out of a classic thrash track like this.

The album then barrels full speed ahead into Taste The Floor and Behind Bars, it never slows down for a second and it's paced relentlessly. This is fast, speedy thrash in its pure and uncut form. Dave Carlo's guitar work is impressive in its speed and it's precise enough to hold your attention but raw enough to feel pretty unpredictable. Below The Belt opens with a scream that would make Rob Halford blush before some gang vocals add some punch to this Venom-esque number. I'll Only Say It Once has a bit more of a groove to it, Adam Carlo's bass and Rob Mills' drums laying it down for the opening segment only to then once again go at it full throttle. Enforcer will get you caught in a mosh in no time, those snares and those cymbals really getting a serious pummeling from Mills each time the song hits its breakdown, McLaren's yelps and growls fitting in nicely.

The title track marks the half way point on the album proper. It's a two and a half minute long barrage that's actually catchy, at least catchy by the standards of eighties thrash and it's a stand out track to be sure. Out Of The Game is more of the same, opening with a slick riff from Carlo and building off of that riff until the rest of the band catch up and blast away. Edge Of The Razor is the longest track on the record at four minutes and fourteen seconds. It's got a doomy intro with some Sabbathy drums holding court over a guitar that starts off a little drony but that gets increasingly wilder until that mighty riff once again comes into the mix. A minute and a half later and it's back to the thrash zone, another insane scream throwing the vocals off of a veritable cliff, more crazy gang vocals on the chorus as McLaren shrieks like a banshee. This is as intense as it gets.

Bringing the album into the homestretch, Eye Of The Storm clocks in at just over three minutes and it's a solid, if slightly generic track. It's fine, heavy and loud and abrasive as it should be, but it doesn't stand out from the rest of the record all that much. From here, the twenty-one second long Roll Out The Barrel (yes, that Roll Out The Barrel, proving these guys definitely had a sense of humor), leads into Discipline, a two and a half minute long slice of classic Razor, a song that really embodies what Carlo and company do so well. Again, it sounds a bit like Venom, but not as sloppy or as goofily Satanic. Fed Up is next and it's as angry and as pissed off as a song called Fed up should be, which leads to the last song on the album, Soldier Of Fortune. This brings the album out on a high note, perfectly timed at three minutes in length and a great mix of speed metal and traditional thrash all sort of rolled into one beastly behemoth of a song.

This reissue from Relapse Records doesn't stop there, however. Exclusive to this release are three bonus tracks recorded live at a show that went down in Toronto, Ontario in February of 1988. Included here for your enjoyment are live versions of Shootout, Snake Eyes and The Marshall Arts which leads into Hypertension. The quality of the audio won't floor you and it's obviously taken from an old tape source but it's cool to hear the band doing their thing live at this point in their career, towards the end of McLaren's run as vocalist.