Asphyx The Rack

Asphyx 'The Rack' (Ibex Moon 2010)

This is the Ibex Moon re-release of the death metal classic originally released by Century Media in 1991. The re-release is signed by the masterly rhythm section of Bob Bagchus and Martin Van Drunen, the latter also providing his trademark paint stripping vocals, and comes on nice blue wax.

The vocals, as usual with any release featuring Mr Van Drunen, are incredible. He makes John Tardy sound like a choir boy. How he manages to summon up such harshness without ripping his vocal chords to shreds is anybody's guess. The vulnerability in many of his accents creates an agonising, tortured sound which leads to hell being unleashed for verse after verse of horror obsessed death metal. When you see him live it is awe inspiring how brutal he is. Truly brutal, not idiotic pig squealing, inhaling, hands cupped round the mike brutal. He is a true death metal legend.

When Fraser and I undertook the seemingly endless trek to Germany's Party San festival in 2010 it was, in the main, to catch Autopsy's first European gig in two decades, but we were both pleased to see Asphyx on the bill. They certainly didn't disappoint and delivered a fine set of crown pleasing neck snapping old school Death.

The day after Asphyx's performance Fray and I had made our daily pilgrimage to the local bar in the village of Bad Berka, where the ladies toilets were a far more salubrious location for our daily ablutions etc. than the festival campsite, and in walked bass player Alwin Zuur and the aforementioned Martin Van Drunen. To say I was excited would be to put it mildly, I was slightly inebriated which only heightened my inner nerd, and I rushed into the beer garden to meet a vocal hero.

What a pair of absolute gentlemen, I may have been half cut, but they both seemed genuinely happy to meet us, shake hands, trade a few metal stories, enthuse, as real fans, about how amazing Autopsy had been the night before, and take the piss out of our Scottish accents. Hearing Martin saying 'Och Aye the noo, ah came from Scotland!' was hilarious, and when we met them both again at the Neurotic Death Fest a year later, Alwin, in particular, remembered us, which still, even in my advancing years, makes me tingle with fanboy joy!

'The Rack' was recorded on a shoe string budget, $1500, on an eight track in Asphyx's practice space which would soon become the renowned Harrow Productions Studios. Despite, or rather because, of the lo fi techniques used to record the album it is a document of straight ahead, heavy, crushing death metal. Asphyx are still at the forefront of the Doom Death movement which mixed up the sludgy, agonising death rattle of bands like St Vitus and Trouble with the knuckle dragging atavism of death metal stripped of its technical trappings. Celtic Frost probably originated the style, but contemporaries of Asphyx were, and still remain, Autopsy, Obituary, Grave and Incantation.

Although all tracks on offer here, from the bubonic plague themed 'Vermin' to the occult brilliance of 'Pages in Blood', are fine examples of stripped down crawling chaos, you need only listen to the masterful title track to experience true Doom Death. The opening riff oozes out of the speakers, like Slayer on ketamine, and then leads into some brilliant mid paced thrashing. The tormented vocals must have been recorded whilst the rack was being applied such is anguish summoned in this attack on the horrific techniques used by the Inquisition on so called heretics. There is nothing that can be criticised about this nine minute masterpiece. Even the keyboards add a sense of horror and foreboding!

A classic.

Peace