DESULTORY
"Bitterness" (1994)
Bloody Skull Music
rating: 5 of 6
In fact, I thought I should skip this rubric due to the fact I own only a few old (and rare?) death metal albums which haven't been reviewed by me previously. Anyway, I decided to compose a review on this one. The "Bitterness" CD. The album DESULTORY made their debut with. And their best one, to be honest. At least, they weren't a hardcore band back then. It's pretty energetic, harsh yet melodic thrashy death metal… or more likely, fairly "deathened" thrash metal with raw vokills and a couple of heavy metal reminiscences. Each track possesses it's own personality, to say the last. A couple of them even feature memorable refrains (!), such as "Enslaved", which is, in fact, the best composition off "Bitterness". Produced and engineered by Tomas Skogsberg and Fred Estby, this effort doesn't feature any kind of boredom or that purposely dirty sound (irritating at times) acts such as DISMEMBER or ENTOMBED used to adhere to (at least, previously). All in all, those who get high on death metal and still don't have "Bitterness" in their collection, definitely HAVE TO find and purchase it. Actually, if the whole album would feature only that "Enslaved"-track and sold at the price of 10$, it could be worth it anyway. (Herr Stalhammar)

LOUDBLAST
"Cross The Threshold" (1993)
Noise Records
rating: 5 of 6
One more intriguing effort, this time from France's death metal leading star. At least, it was the "leading star" back in early nineties. "Cross The Threshold" is a mini-CD only, however, just like DESULTORY's "Bitterness" if it was comprised of "Enslaved" only, it's worth your money. Coming with six tracks (three of them strike as the new ones, while "Malignant Growth" appears in a 1993 version, "Subject To Spirit" - in the new version, and finally "Sublime Dementia" is a Morrisound version), it offers us undoubtedly exciting form of semi-techno death metal, seeming to be influenced simultaneously by… Dutch DM scene and bands like NOCTURNUS and others of that ilk, although even if LOUDBLAST incorporate keyboards, there're only few of them. Female voice may be discovered here, though. Not a usual thing for a 1993 death metal album, eh? This one was produced by Colin Richardson, so, obviously, there's  nothing to cavil at in terms of overall execution. And nothing when it comes to musicianship as well. All of the titles off "Cross The Threshold" appear as undoubtedly bewitching and memorable pieces, although I'd most likely mark out only "Mandatory Suicide", "Cross The Threshold" and "Sublime Dementia". (Herr Stalhammar)