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DEATH RACER “From Gravel to the Grave”
DEATH RACER “From Gravel to the Grave”
By Dr. Abner Mality
I must confess, I was never into Formula One racing. Now I used to like old 70’s stock car racing with moonshiners and hillbillies going for broke on dirt tracks and my local short track haven Rockford Speedway (R.I.P.). But I can sure see the connection between high speed auto racing and high speed metal. So do DEATH RACER from Austria and thus do we have “From Gravel to the Grave”.
These asphalt junkies are very firmly in the “speed metal” mode as opposed to the “thrash” mode. It’s a fine distinction, as always, but it’s obviously there. That means we have tracks in the vein of the first few RAZOR albums, old EXCITER, IRON ANGEL and maybe some of the bite of speed punk. This shit sounds loose and wild, like a car taking hairpin curves at top speed...it comes close to wiping out, but avoids it by the skin of its teeth. “Motomentor” sets the stage pretty well, but things get even more intense with “Nordschiefe” and then completely blow open with the ridiculously titled “Inverted Crossroads”.
That last title shows DEATH RACER don’t take themselves real seriously...they also got a track called “Traumatized In Traffic Jam Ejection”. Which by the way slows things down a bit to a chunkier kind of grind. There’s lots of wild whoops and yells on the vocal end, samples from European racing meets and an agreeably raw production that really does sound like it came out of 1983.
“Racers of Death” and “S.M. Death Worship” are dueling each other on the final lap to see which track is the fastest and I gotta call that a photo finish. The real winners are fans of classic RAZOR-esque speed metal!
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