Album: Victims Of Science
Year: 1989
Genre: Thrash Metal
So how much does weight
does a vocalist carry with you? I’m not
talking about when a band has a member change, but the actual vocal performance
itself. I seem to be able to listen to
bands with bad drummers, bad guitarists, bad bassists (Who can tell,
right? I’m kidding! Sort of.) without issue. When instrumentation is not proficient, it
gets justified as passion or having heart; the kids playing in their garage
theory. Sometimes bands sound better
when they’re loose and just bashing away at the songs. There’s merit in that. Sometimes bands improve their skill to a
point of losing what made them fiery and interesting in the first place. Yet, when it comes to the vocals, I have a very difficult time
dismissing them that way. This is the
questions I’m always asking myself when I listen to Gammacide’s only full
length release, Victims Of Science.
By the time 1989 was
rolling around, thrash metal was becoming a second-class citizen in quality and
impact. The old guard was evolving, many
of them not for the better, and most of the new kids just weren’t coming up
with anything electrifying or unique. There
were exceptions, and Gammacide was one of them.
The music on this record is lethal and unrelenting and could take down a
charging rhino. They were very technical
and added a ton of abrupt shifts in each song.
They would be best described as a mix of early Megadeth and Exodus…but
faster and with a more concentrated effort on brutality. Pretty devastating stuff. Then the vocals kick in…. No, it’s not as jarring as the first time you
heard Katon W. De Pena, Sean Killian or Jon Cyriss. In fact, it’s not jarring at all. The performance is very monotone,
homorhythmic and sadly underwhelming.
Singer Varnam Ponville does not forge a sound that compliments the chaos
happening underneath. He sounds like the
vocal equivalent of an irritated Golden Retriever instead of a nasty, snarling
Rottweiler; no grit, no growl, no bite, not much of anything. The vocals range from loud talking to not
very hostile barked out (lots of dog references here) words. It just does not elevate the aggression. One
could only imagine what a young Chuck Billy, Baloff or Mille P. could have done
with this record. That being said, it
also does not stop me from listening to Gammacide because the music is so damn
great. I’ve just succumbed to the fact
the vocal are what they are and I tend to concentrate more on the
instruments. This could have been a
pinnacle album that could’ve hung with the best in the genre if it didn’t
suffer from a weak vocal performance. A
shame.
Listen to "Fossilized" here.
No comments:
Post a Comment