Altar

The only decent Romanian Thrash-album. Full stop.
...but compared to what exactly, one might wonder? Well to be honest I'm only aware of 2 other LPs that belongs in this tiny niche: NEUROTICA, which is boring as hell, and TECTONIC's "Anomalia" which has its interesting moments, but is probably a bit too weird & crossover'y for the average 80's Thrash-fan. Despite its late year of release "The Last Warning" can also boast with being the first Romanian Thrash-album, proving that the credo 'older is better' holds true even in cases when 'old' is slightly less old than we're used to.

Let's first list the flaws of the album and get that part over and done with: Opening an album w/ the lord's prayer only works for Doom Metal bands. For all other forms of music it makes you sound christian (*yuch!*) - which ALTAR obviously are, but now it's impossible for normal people to pretend they're not. The vocals... they're not bad, but occationally a bit too screetchy in a what-the-hell-is-that-guy-doing-to-his-poor-voice!?-kind of way for a 'moderately brutal' Thrash Metal band. Elsewise I can't really come up with any major complaints. The songwriting is pending from solid to quite bril' (at their best, think a less proggy Anacrusis), noteworthy stand-out tunes being the epic "Victims Of War" with its exquisit riffing and haunting choir-part, and the following "The Accusation" which sports some truly masterful guitar noodlings reminding me of Nifelheim(!?) for some ungodly reason - frankly the whole of side A flies by with my thumbs pointing steadily in the upwards direction and it's only on side B that their general lack of originality is starting to grate me and the fillers start rearing their ugly heads. Only the mid-pace powerthrasher "Alone" manages to catch my attention here, meaning this is yet another example of one of those downward-slope type albums. Guess you can't win 'em all... At least the sleeve is evil-looking enough for us to forget that unfortunate intro at the end of the day.

Their second album "Respect" appeared 2 years later and with a title like that I don't think I need to go into detail as to what direction the band were heading in from thereon. R.I.P.