A few weeks ago, while attending the mini edition of this year’s Metal Threat Festival, I found myself pillaging the Hell’s Headbangers booth (sans J-Dawg, who was in Vegas for a bodybuilding competition) per usual. As I flipped through the big boy shirts (2XL, which some may consider a lightweight), I couldn’t help but notice one I HAD to have: A black t-shirt bearing the Wild Rags Records logo. For the posers out there, I mean, ill informed, Wild Rags for being “America’s smallest, but heaviest record label”. Amongst the classics you have to thank them for: Impetigo’s Horror of the Zombies, Blood’s Impulse to Destroy, Nuclear Death’s Bride of the Insect. The list goes on.
There were also cult bands who flew beneath the surface, some never making it to the full length stage. One such band was Anialator (not to be confused with Annihilator). Hailing from the Lone Star State, Anialator dropped two punishing EPs in the late ’80s, before spending the better part of 25 years wallowing in obscurity. Come 2015, they’d reunite for a triumphant run of the festival circuit, but even that would be stifled legal issues regarding who owned the rights to the name (Geoff Tate, you really started a whole wave). Now, in 2024, nearly 40 years since their initial formation, founding bassist Alex Dominguez has prevailed, finally delivering Anialator’s long awaited debut album, Death is Calling.
At its core, Death is Calling is as meat and potatoes of a thrash album as one could ask for in 2024. Is it reinventing the wheel in any capacity whatsoever? Absolutely not. That said, I’d be lying if I didn’t find myself enjoying moments of this affair strongly, especially being in a pissed off headspace (I’m not now, but I sure was when listening to this album the first time around). The opening “Kill Till Death” comes in fast, brutal, and misanthropic as all hell. Sure, the production is modern, but the intent is pure, and that’s full blown thrash-mania. Breakneck outbursts like “Memories of Terror” and “Relentless” evoke the earliest days of death/thrash with their lunatic delivery and blinding speed attacks.
At times, there are even shades of crossover, particularly in the aggression of the riffs and vocals on cuts like “Hear the Death Call” and the closing “Terror Tactics”, but at no point would I file this alongside Cro-Mags or even fellow Texans D.R.I. No, this is a brutal thrash onslaught, that even at its most cliché and predictable, only truly lags on the chug-heavy “Iron Grinder”. Sorry dudes, but the knucle-dragging skullduggery of this one just ain’t cutting it, characteristic of what one would expect from Megadave (yes, you read that correctly) from Countdown to Extinction onwards.
Yes, Death is Calling is “just another” thrash album, but it’s just another thrash album done largely correct. In true old school fashion, this bad boy keeps it short and simple, walloping us with 7 songs in 32 minutes, which is all one really needs. If you took off “Iron Grinder” and gave it a truly retro ’80s production, it’d probably be more effective in its attack, but that’s more of an observation than a complaint. Besides, put these maniacs against their neighbors up north who fell off after 1990’s Never, Neverland and it ain’t even a contest.
6 out of 10
Label: Xtreem Music
Genre: Thrash Metal
For fans of: Blood Feast, Morbid Saint, Rigor Mortis
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