Album review: Fatality – Metal as Hell!

Everything about the dreadfully-titled Metal as Hell! screams early-nineties thrash, from Fatality’s spiky band-name logo, through the song titles (such as “Terminal Agression” [their misspelling, by the way], “Shock Treatment” and “Gritface”) and out into the CD sleeve, whose woefully cheesy design brings back memories of trawling through record fair stalls in search of obscure Bay Area thrash bands. Back in those days, it cost a lot of money to make even the shittiest looking CD. Nowadays it costs comparative peanuts, so one must charitably assume Fatality are deliberately trying to evoke the aesthetics of a bygone era.

This suspicion is partly confirmed immediately, as “Terminal Agression” launches into the leading snares and scraping riffs of old-school thrash, with utterly OTT (and, more often than not, gratuitous) fretboard-fury solos, terrace-chant choruses and vocalist Tom Morrison sneering his way through the established lyrical tropes of pain, war, death, pain and, er, agression. Fatality couldn’t be more old-school if they tried, and they’ve evidently tried very hard; their musicianship is pretty solid, and the occasional drifting timing (which is probably a function of low production costs) actually makes them sound more authentic, as do the fizzy guitar tones and the barely perceptible kick-drum.

Which is all fair enough – you get a band together, and you record the best demo you can afford, and as such it would be cheap to kick Fatality for not having access to a big-budget studio for months at a time. What cannot be allowed to slip past is Metal as Hell’s utter lack of originality. The Bay Area revival is currently doing a good job of revitalising the clichés of the past with the lessons of the present, but Fatality would have been considered journeymen clones in 1990.

Hearing Morrison snarl “time to taste some metal!” without a trace of irony is almost wince-worthy at the same level as the inevitable local news interview with the queue outside a Motorhead show. When Exodus did this back in the day, it seemed amusing and invigorating; Fatality’s nostalgic desire to “Bring Back the Days” of ‘proper’ metal is made all the more risible by the fact that they were probably still in nappies when Metallica’s Black Album closed the door on the thrash era for good.

Credit where it’s due, though, Fatality have the rabid pace and fury that made thrash so exciting, alongside that wild-eyed love of their own instruments. Make no mistake, Metal as Hell! is all metal all the time, full of twiddly little chromatic licks over chuggity palm-muting and splattering machine-gun snares. The musicianship makes some better-known bands sound pedestrian, though Morrison’s voice needs a lot of work to break out of its am-dram tough guy impression and into something less unintentionally comedic.

But what Metal as Hell! demonstrates best of all is that some musicians really need help in marketing themselves. Kudos to Fatality for recording themselves and sending it out, but the song name spelling error is only one of a catalogue of examples of poor attention to detail in presentation.

PR outfits rarely employ people with what you’d call a poetic grasp of the language, but Fatality’s homegrown press release reads like two massive rambling sentences of unquantifiable claims – not least of which is the mention that Metal as Hell! “has been rated as one of the best independent releases of its time with people being stunned at the sheer quality and style of the music.” The lack of even a single supporting review quote doesn’t make this look very plausible, does it? Seriously, kids, this is why you get someone who knows what they’re doing to write your promo material. You may not necessarily need a label any more, but that only emphasises the need to have a good PR outfit working for you.

But hey, rant over – Fatality deserve respect for having the balls to shove their music out there under their own steam, and Metal as Hell! showcases what I suspect is probably a thoroughly competent live act. But a year or so (of solid touring and practice, if not just life in general) will need to pass before they’re ready to release an album that can be taken seriously.