This is a mini-LP of outtakes from PARANOID’s latest full-length Out Raising Hell. Regrettably, I have not picked up that album yet, but this is very appetizing, recording/production-wise. Diminutive chords (thinking VISIONS also from Sweden) and death metal infernal riffing conjure VENOM, REPULSION, and POSSESSED, also reminding me of contemporaries BASTARD PRIEST and ELEGY. I first got into PARANOID when I reviewed their Cover of the Month cassette some years ago, and was completely stoked on their choices, raging from death metal and classic metal, to crust and mangel D-beat hardcore. PARANOID’s execution plays confidently within the thrash metal/D-beat spectrum, and they make it sound easy. All the gruesome hardcore punk disdain with giblets of old school death metal. This latest LP is clearly headbänger-for-känger.
//Maximum Rocknroll, Jason Ryan. Posted: 2020-11-09, MRR #450 • November 2020
