Tucked away from the arena-thrashing Big Four rests the hammering, oddball thrash of Teutonic titans Kreator and low-rent thrills of junkyard heroes Overkill. And in steaming, shred-filled corners lurks the neoclassical leanings of Forbidden and the proto-tech death work of the initial Atheist outing Piece of Time. And even further down the hall, embodying elements of all these ideas, lies the hissing, bass-warped, and often overlooked Sadus, a California act known best for incubating the now legendary string-slapper Steve DiGiorgio, whose credits contemporaneous to top-ranked Sadus output included death metal landmarks by Autopsy (1989’s Severed Survival) and Death (1992’s Human and 1994’s Individual Thought Patterns). In the first three Sadus outings, you can hear a shriek-loaded vocal insanity (1988’s Illusions1), fret-rattling progressive urgency (1990’s Swallowed in Black), and death-accompanied groove (1992’s A Vision of Misery) that DiGiorgio helped bring to Sadus from his other journeys. To escape dormancy Sadus has re-awakened as a two-founder fury, guitarist/vocalist Darren Travis and drummer Jon Allen. Sans fretless magic, does Sadus still know how to thrash?
The late 90s may have seen Sadus wandering too deep into (then) modern, groovy, and progressive sounds, and the 2006 offering Out for Blood leaning further into weird synth intros, drop-tuned guitars, thrash heresy.2 But, at the core of their most beloved outings, the backbone of Sadus was always a neck-snapping, zig-zag riffcraft punctuated by Travis’ nasally, unpredictable snarl, all vicious in its own right against DiGiorgio’s wizardry. In that regard, The Shadow Inside hits no different, with lilting spitfire verses carving a path through many a triplet-laced groove (“It’s the Sickness,” “Anarchy”). On the jaunty highlight “No Peace,” Travis (presumed) puts his bass fingers to the test and summons a rumble that’s wholly home in camp Sadus. For a band seventeen years from the studio and over a decade away from the stage, The Shadow Inside packs a calculated impact.
However, outside of a solid performance, Sadus doesn’t have enough tricks sprinkled about Shadow to present their highest caliber of techy death-thrash. Still the seasoned character of their particular pit-spinning voice allows them to navigate the slower waters they now tread with fog-splitting guitar solos (“Ride the Knife”) and spacious, snaking riffs that hold plenty of tension (“The Shadow Inside”). Time has taken a toll on Travis’ ability to hit the same levels of treble-scraping mic attacks, but his raspy words cut and linger and bleed as the tether along each track, much in the way that Kelly Shaefer guides the virtuosic mania of Atheist jumbles.3 Though, outside of some well-recorded and exuberant tom fills and cymbal splashes (“Scorched and Burnt” pilots this pathway early), there’s just not a whole lot happening that either Sadus or other thrash bands haven’t done before in the riff department.
Repetition, unfortunately, plagues the moments that move with less intensity throughout Shadow. While it’s true that certain extended song runs land well, the double fake-out ending of “First Blood” does little to create a bigger crescendo for what could have been a punchier opening statement. Similarly, the revival in the late game of “The Devil in Me” brings about a satisfying tempo acceleration after a late game revival but still finds a way to slow it back down to a mid-pace in time to meet the jogging cadence of “Pain.” The majority of the album lives in this all-too-friendly mode of start and finish. Thrash albums succeed through whiplash that borders collapse, bright intrusions that tip-toe the line between untamed and practiced—Sadus shows with “It’s the Sickness” and “Ride the Knife” in particular that level of power where they once thrived. But fourty-seven minutes is too much thrash to go through with these kinds of smooth-about peaks.
Even if numbers like “Ride the Knife” and “Anarchy” stir fervor enough to ignite stumbling cargo shorts and battle vests to swirl in choreographed destruction, The Shadow Inside struggles to present as unconditionally good. Sadus has lived through an era where they, and countless others around them, wrote the rules. And in its textbook execution, this newest effort fails to pull me away from wanting to listen to better thrash records, Sadus’ own work included. Though The Shadow Inside holds its footing far away from being bad, I find it harder and harder to return with each listen. That’s a real shame.
Rating: 2.5/5.0
DR: 8 | Format Reviewed: 192 kbps mp3
Label: Nuclear Blast Records | Bandcamp
Websites: sadusofficial.bandcamp.com | facebook.com/sadusguy
Releases Worldwide: November 17th, 2023
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