I'd been eyeing this CD for quite
sometime during my frequent trips to Wild Rags Records (the now defunct
premiere music store for Death/Thrash/everything-else Metal in So. California)
back in the early 1990's. The name sounded cool and the cover seemed to
support my idea that the band was a thrashy little Bay Area outfit. I finally
forked over the $12 bucks and dove into it straight-away. My first impressions
were mixed. EPIDEMIC had a decent sound, not all that heavy but crisp,
and I thought the vocalist was great (aggressively nasty but almost always
understandable). What nudged me the wrong way was the band's insistence
on blasting away at breakneck speed in most of their songs making this
whole album sound all too repetitive. There isn't much in the way of stand-out
tracks to speak of with the exception of "Vision Divine" which,
for me, made it worth keeping the album. In fact, that song alone is the
only reason I still have this CD in my collection! Its a rather slow, plodding
and menacing song that has all the elements of Death Metal with good lyrics.
I still pop Decameron in my CD player just to listen to that
one track, then promptly remove it since, in my humble opinion, there isn't
much else worth listening to on the CD. Its just a whole lot of blinding
speed, almost bordering on blast-beats and simplistic, unoriginal riffs
that have all been resurrected from years past. In fact, the most blatantly
ripped-off riff in Thrash Metal history again rears its ugly head - the
much plagiarized "Chemical Warfare" riff of SLAYER fame.
There is nothing technical about EPIDEMIC's
music nor are the songs all that different from ones we have heard other
Speed Metal bands do a thousands times before. This saddens me as I feel
that EPIDEMIC, before their demise, had some potential sometime in the
future. Decameron however, just leaves you feeling like you haven't purchased
anything at all groundbreaking. Speed freaks may enjoy it for its pure
balls-out tempo but I need something more for my money.
Vision
Divine
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EPIDEMIC
