⚡⚡⚡ Ripped - Through My Eyes (1993) ⚡⚡⚡
🎸 Old School Progressive Death/Thrash Metal, США 🇺🇸
☠
Regardless of the complex, nearly undecipherable at times, character of these folks’ music there’s a tangible feeling of air-headedness, nonchalance as if the guys never took themselves very seriously, and were content enough to remain on a rehearsing, jam session-like level. And yet, they did produce some fairly perplexing metal which simply wasn’t destined to rise above ground due to its not very accessible, overtly chaotic at times, nature.
The debut at least was a fairly listenable affair, excellent technical retro thrash with Megadeth the prime target for worship, also in the vocal department, but there were also a couple of outside-the-box moments like spacey, psychedelic spices those taken straight from the Voivod and Equinox textbooks. A defiant recording having in mind the shifting tastes at the time, but more than welcome to keep the thinning retro metal fanbase happy for another couple of months.
A pitstop made on “Easter Island” (the EP) a year later showed the band moving towards a more elaborate, not very comprehensive direction, also incorporating more brutal death metal-ish elements into their ambitious thrashy palette which also featured re-worked versions of cuts from the debut. It didn’t take long for the audience to see how far the band had reached in their lofty visions cause a few months later the album reviewed here came out, and it must have shocked the handful of fans the guys had accumulated with its overtly aggressive, harsh, plain chaotic again delivery with most of the tracks having this rushed, unfinished feel as though the band hadn’t had the time to complete the recordings, and had provided the penultimate draft rather than stretching further the nerves of the masses.
It’s not all that “pretty” here like “All Too Pretty” shows with its hectic, jazzy riffs and sudden balladic interludes, spastic unnerving music which gets marginally more linear on the 2-min jumper “Don’t Expect the Unexpected”, but literally expect the unexpected on the total madness that is “Drowning in the Desert”, a bizarre combination of brutal Atheist-like dashes and nearly meditative respites. More eccentricity in copious amounts with the “Friends” triptych which ranges from stylish fusion-like thrash/death ala Cynic’s “Focus” (part 1) to cacophonic death-like, randomly assembled noises (part 3). The singer tries to match the musical insanity with wild shouty tirades bordering on hysteria very seldom adhering to any actual singing in the process.
“Faces” is a quirky bluesy deathster, if there ever can be such a categorization, a soulful accumulation of calmer riffs rudely broken by the crazy jazzisms on “I Am Your God”, but the mentioned amalgam returns for the slightly busier “Cavity”, and for the exotic dishevelled headbanger “Gibraltar”. More creepy, technical virtuosity arrives with “Is It Safe?”, a masterpiece of twisted minimalistic thrashisms which are nowhere encountered on the following quirky ballad “No New Tale to Tell”. Expect Atheist’s “Elements” revisited in its entirety within just 3-min on "Talking to the Wall" with bouncy, illogical rhythms galore before “Sea of Flies” enters the scene with more bewildering crooked, jazz-like configurations, the piece of chaos titled “Mold” a downbeat bluesy epitaph of the less predictable, perverted variety.
The several abrupt endings of the pieces here are another indication of the impromptu-like nature of this least standard opus. Another most shining example of the stream-of-consciousness compositional technique, it kind of begs to not be taken seriously, and due to its hard to categorize character it can even pass for the product of the 90’s with the crunchy, choppy rhythm-section sounding quite angry at times. It’s difficult to decide whether it was influenced by the three similarly-styled, but way more coherent, eye-openers released the same year: Cynic’s “Focus”, Atheist’s “Elements”, and Pestilence’s “Spheres”, as it may have been released earlier. If not, then this is pretty much their mutated “offspring”, spawned immediately hence its freakishly crooked, incomplete shape, and the radical shift in style compared to the debut. Or, the guys may have heard one of them, most likely the Atheist effort, and had decided to quickly stitch something similar, within a day or two, either because they didn’t have more time, or because they were too inspired to let it wait until it settled in…
Speculations and theories which will never be proven right or wrong; the truth is that this unknown batch are responsible for one of the most bizarre twisted creations on the whole metal circuit, a product of lunacy and genius working together in discordant unison, the band reaping the “stormy” consequences from this collaboration with hands, hearts and souls. There was definitely more room for similar musical chaos on the not very demanding 90’s metal arena, but an act of the kind were just too forward-thinking and too proficient to waste time pleasing the groovy audience. They ripped them to shreds just this once, and then sank back into their own lunatic, psychotic universe.
(c) bayern
(c) metal-archives
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Состав:
Rick Fisher - Vocals, Bass
Fred Meyer - Drums
Darin Herrman - Guitars
Стафф:
Alex Salazar - Photography
Judd Parker - Producer, Engineering
Hoova - Producer
Recorded and mixed at Morrisound Recording, Tampa, Fla.
Лейбл: Lethal Records
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https://www.metal-archives.com/bands/Ripped/22183
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wsw9vUn6RUs
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#ttd_Progressive_Death_Thrash_Metal
#ttd_США
#ttd_Ripped
