Insanity
SACREFIXION

September 2001
Released: 2001, Black Lung Productions
Rating: 4.2/5
Reviewer: Luxi Lahtinen

Still someone out there who remembers these Californian deathrashers Insanity whose debut album, "Death After Death" was released as late as back in '93 by a German label M.B.R. Records that originally should have been released in '87 already, but had to postponed due to a string of major setbacks, financial problems and the death of Joe De Zuniga - being a strong link of the band as a vocalist/guitarist/artist and a composer? Well, if you didn't get that album at that time when it came out, now you have got another chance for that as Black Lung Productions offers a new opportunity for purchasing it by re-releasing it again.



This new, 3-song demo-CD, however, titled SACREFIXION, just proves and makes a fact stronger that Insanity are back again with a serious (death-)thrashing attack, making as much fine noise as they did in the past - even if the band has gone thru some radical line-up changes during all these past years. Gone are Bob Martinez, Matt Janko, Phakash Sharma and Josh Santage who were all in the recording line-up of DEATH AFTER DEATH album. The line-up is built around one of the two founding members of Insanity Dave Gorsuch (vocals/guitar) and newest additions to Insanity are Lou Gilbert on bass, Scott Dodge on another guitar and Bud Mills on drums who actually was one of the former members of the past Insanity line-up.



The title track, "Sacrefixion", wonderfully reminds me of the same infamous Insanity that tried to make me deaf by such era-blistering songs on their D.O.D. album as "Attack of Archangels", "Fire Death Fate", "Blood for Blood" and so on. A funny thing is that they haven't turned into a 'Nu-metal' (or, ´mallcore´, whatever term it´s called it nowadays) band during all these years just like many other pityful ´metal´ bands (you know exactly what bands I'm talking about here, don't you?) in the States, and tried to make some easy money by jumping to a bandwagon - but instead of that, have stayed loyal and truthful towards their old school, technical yet powerful deathrash´ish metal. "Sacrefixion" as a single song screams for all these ingredients. It's fast, it's powerful, it's lethal and most of all it's as much fuckin' insanity as the name of the band already suggests; bringing the glorious '80s intensity in speed and power back into our minds. Somehow this song also brought a thrashier version of Sadistic Intent to my mind which is only cool, I guess.



The remaining last two songs on this promotional CD are both full of great tempo changes the well-known Insanity -vein; from slower sections to faster type of parts and you can really hear and understand how the guys have truly put lots of sweat, tears and blood into these particular songs here just by diving into the depths of their tricky song structures. Just fuckin´ killer and impresive stuff on this promotional M-CD - all the three songs!!



Now my appetite is growing faster than the metalheads in Insanity could possibly imagine, so PLEASE throw me another Insanity full-length soon, mates!! I wanna get my head thrashed and banged by your sonic violence as soon as possible again. The sooner - the better, of course!! ;=)