[Cover artwork by Joachim Luetke]
I have always found thrash to be one of the more interesting case studies in heavy metal because thrash in its purest form experienced one of the more spectacular near deaths following a notably scorching peak through 1987 and scooching into 1988. That death was largely self-inflicted to boot, centered mostly on the movers and shakers finding some peculiar need to “grow out of” thrash’s ambition for unbridled ferocity to prove there was an intelligence and (gasp) elegance behind all that furious lashing and bashing. If like me you grew up alongside the movement, perhaps you also recall interview after interview that featured a myriad of puffy-sneakered Rapunzels in baked leather jackets making claims along the lines of “People think we’re just brainless thrashers, but we’re not.” Um, yes, you are. Embrace it with the rest of us, you gloriously stupid idiots. Being young and dumb is part of the human program.
Couple that with the impossible to resist carrot that was a smidgeon of consideration from a handful of major labels offering fancy tours and legit careers only to the most mature party animals with the clearest potential for mega church-levels of devotees and you suddenly have dimwits like Rick Rubin sticking his sandaled piggies in the doorway. “Hey, thrasher, need a guru to soundscape your way to Gucci sunglasses?”
Thankfully, not everyone drank the Kool-Aid, as evidenced by the rise of crossover, death / thrash and, apposite to the subject at hand, tech thrash. Crossover felt inevitable, given that thrash and hardcore both held similar objectives to unlock unbridled hostility, and death / thrash represented the next logical step before Earache, Peaceville, Roadrunner, etc. shattered skulls with the next level of extremity and a new wave of death metal giants.
Tech thrash, however—now THIS was how you dragged thrash from its cave-dwelling roots and tacked some level of sharp sophistication to the blueprint. The offshoot flew in on the wings of Texas futurists Watchtower and their mindblowingly forward-thinking 1985 debut, Energetic Disassembly, and it pushed to further limits inside 1987 on the heels of prime movers such as Nasty Savage (Indulgence, February 1), Mekong Delta (Mekong Delta, February 21), Coroner (R.I.P., June 1), Vendetta (Go and Live… Stay and Die, September), plus a smattering of others even deeper in the underground.
For their part, Destruction had quite an interesting launch to 1987. The band made a big enough splash with their debut EP and two subsequent full-lengths to land a number of significant tours, but just as things really got cooking in late ‘86, founding member / pummeler Tommy “Sandman” Senmann saw the writing on the wall (pending military duties and an itch to find a profession beyond drumming) and made the difficult decision to lay his sticks to rest. Following a brief fill-in period with Sodom’s Witchhunter (R.I.P.) behind the kit to help with touring, the band ushered in Oliver “Olly” Kaiser as a permanent replacement (previously a jazz and funk drummer… say whaaa?), along with a second guitarist in Henry Wilkens to strengthen their live sound and reinforce Destruction’s decision to move in a more technical direction. Boom: Out wriggled the Mad Butcher EP in March of ’87, showcasing a far more complex framework that lifted the band well beyond graveyard promo photos and any ties to the proto-black metal movement.
Release from Agony, the band’s third full-length and Destruction’s first as a quartet, followed Mad Butcher nine months later in December of ‘87 via Steamhammer in Europe, but it didn’t hit the States until May of 1988 through the utterly bizarre Profile Records, a hip hop label that dabbled in crossover via a connection to NY’s Cro-Mags and their walloper debut, Age of Quarrel. I remain confused as to exactly how Destruction managed to find their way to join groups such as the Cro-Mags, Leeway, Run DMC, and Poor Righteous Teachers (great early ‘90s hip hop group), but I’m guessing it would’ve been fun to be a fly on the wall when the Profile execs first laid eyes on Joachim Luetke artwork for this release.
And about that artwork…
Suffice to say, it’s understandable that there’s really very little middle ground as far as reactions to this cover art are concerned. Is it the most awful image you could imagine hitting a cover in the ‘80s? Yeah. Yeah, maybe just a bit. Most of us were already familiar with horrific and strange metal imagery, thanks in part to Celtic Frost’s connection to H.R. Giger, but Luetke’s vision (designed by a fellow named Guido Glöckler) was just… next level strange. Comprehensive oddness aside, even four decades later I still find myself lost as to why the creature: 1) is missing a finger on the left hand, 2) Doesn’t have eyelids, and 3) Has such a terrible skin problem around that ruined nose. In short, the cover still creeps me the fuck out, but there’s no question that it did the job of catching eyes, and it definitely managed to match the overall oddness of the record to boot. Bottom line: Regardless of which end of the love or hate spectrum you happen(ed) to fall, it’s fair to say Luetke’s artwork here is ICONIC.
Musically, as mentioned, Release from Agony vaulted the band into the tech thrash age before any of us even knew to call this sort of thing ‘tech thrash’. Was it as technically proficient as what was to come a year later and as we rolled into the early ‘90s? Well, there was a good bit of competition, for certain: Blind Illusion (The Sane Asylum, 1988), Sieges Even (Lifecycle, 1988), Deathrow (Deception Ignored, 1989), Forbidden (Twisted Into Form, 1990), Believer (Sanity Obscure, 1990), Dark Angel (Time Does Not Heal, 1991), Depressive Age (First Depression, 1992), just to name a handful. Let’s just say that bands interested in the technical end of metal generally enjoy pushing things to the next level, so let’s just go ahead and state that Release from Agony did a remarkable job of doing much of the early heavy lifting, particularly for those looking for guitar mentors. The riffing top to bottom here is sharp, complex and just sort of… EVERYWHERE, but it still manages to maintain an oily rawness that comes across like a beat-to-hell Mecha bleeding grease but still demolishing everything in its path.
Not to take away from the power Tommy provided on the band’s early works, but newcomer Olly and his more elaborate approach to augmenting the overall punch clearly had an immediate impact. And Harry’s added presence absolutely upped the ‘tangled energy’ quota that helped make the full ride feel just as demented as the album’s cover. What I appreciate the most about Release from Agony, though—something a song like “Dissatisfied Existence” etches in steel early on—is how absolutely ALIEN the record sounds, even four decades later. (Especially four decades later? Like, how is that possible, given all that’s happened since.) That tangled energy has a lot to do with it, making many of the songs sound a bit like Metroid Zoomers skittering inside your ears, but it’s really long-time bassist / front-man Marcel “Schmier” Schirmer’s batshit vocals that push things all the way to Mars. To me, his crackpot rasp and all those piercing howls barely register as human at times, and “Dissatisfied Existence” in particular makes wonder if he mistakenly channeled the experimental years of John Coltrane. (IT COULD HAPPEN.)
Even with its turn toward more complex waters, though, the album remains unmistakably welded to that classic Teutonic sound, as evidenced by a song like “Sign of Fear,” which drifts from the speakers like Sodom’s Persecution Mania after somehow managing to squeak by in an AP Calculus class. Harry’s classical chops on the Grandpa’s Guitars gets some elbow room early on, painting a bit of prettiness over the nuclear fallout, followed by a long stretch of doomy atmosphere that eventually goes fully unhinged at the song’s crucial midpoint. Then, rather suddenly, things jumps into a much happier disposition, as the perennial presence of guitarist Mike Sifringer delivers a joyous and long lead before things return to a quirkiness that’s punctuated by Schmier’s deranged wail of “sIGN… of… fe-AAAHHH!!”
And if you were mostly there to thrash your ass off, which most of us were, Release from Agony was a willing supplier in that realm as well. Again, this was technical thrash before we knew to call it tech thrash, so there were plenty of moments throughout the album’s beautifully succinct 37 minutes where Destruction just ripped in a rather straightforward manner as if everyone’s lives depended on it. “Survive to Die,” for example, a tight and belligerent closer stacked to the rafters with thrash’s predilection for moshing force. But even here, Destruction put a period on the end of the adventure in a peculiar and notably Monty Python manner by allowing a song concerning the triviality of life drift off with a cheeky and very brief cover of Glenn Miller’s “In the Mood.”
Destruction toured untiringly with Release from Agony in their back pockets, hitting Europe and the U.S. countless times alongside all the greats of an era that prefaced the death metal explosion of the early ‘90s. Sometime in late ’89, though, the band sort of… self-destructioned, firing Schmier amidst the recording of Cracked Brain, an album that featured Poltergeist frontman André Grieder behind the mic. As it happens, some consider Cracked Brain to be the true pinnacle of Destruction’s tech thrash face, but I’ve always felt it was a bit uneven and lacking that requisite ‘eccentricity’ that makes Release from Agony really stand out. Plus, it has one of the worst covers I’ve ever heard on a metal record—The Knack’s “My Sharona”—and for some bloody reason it’s placed smack-dab in the middle of the record (the end of side A), which fully derails all momentum.
So, yeah, give me Release from Agony over Cracked Brain any day of the week. And if I’m honest, which I very usually am, I would take this record over anything Destruction has released to date. Sure, I appreciate the band’s early works, particularly the Sentence of Death EP, but Release from Agony hits that truly sweet spot where dexterity, foresight and peculiarity collide in a beautifully loud eruption of tech thrash magnificence, landing the record that highly coveted ‘timeless’ badge that ensures it will never be buried by time and dust.
Insert from the High Roller Records 2022 reissue
