Madhouser
Mind Your Own Business... And Let Me Live DEMO

March 2009
Released: 2008, Self-released
Rating: 2.5/5
Reviewer: Luxi Lahtinen

Who wouldn´t like to put a thrash band together nowadays and have a fair size of bite out of its hottest thrash boom in this ongoing millennium? Seems like everybody does - even our young fellows in a band called Madhouser do, all the way from São Paulo, Brazil.



Madhouser (make a wild guess where they have taken the name from? Hmmm...) have tried to learn their lessons in old-school thrash, the Bay Area style in particular. The title track of this 4-track demo, opens up like the Vio-lence song "Phobophobia" off the band´s highly rated ETERNAL NIGHTMARE album. Not a bad attempt to sound like Vio-lence for such a young band that they are, but copying isn´t always the best way of flattering.



Quite strange, but even Madhouser´s vocalist Júlio has a hint of Sean Killian in his voice. If you have always thought Sean was a bad vocalist, well, maybe you are about to change your opinion about his vocal style when you hear Júlio´s vocals on this demo (nothing against him personally, but ain´t a constructive criticism still allowed?). I mean, he doesn´t particularly suck at sounding as a convincing thrash vocalist more than George W. Bush does when singing the national anthem of United States of America, but he surely has lots of things to be worked on with his vocals. At worst he sounds like he´s in great pain (his vocal parts in "Living on the Edge" are just horrendous), which ain´t anything to be proud of, that´s for certain. At best he´s definitely in the last song of the demo, "Suicidal Mosh", in which he gets his best Sean Killian imitation out from himself. Not bad at all, I would say - and this compliment coming from a guy who has always loved Sean´s distinctive, but great vocal style. ;o)



The riffing is basically on an okay´ish level through the 4 songs they have recorded for this effort, but another thing that seriously need to be worked on are solos in general. If you cannot throw in a properly played solo for a song, why even bother to throw one in in the first place? Sadly, each solo on this demo sounds very amateurish to be completely straight with you. You see, it´s like you cannot use a tie with a tuxedo to do it... just right, can you?



Anyway, for such a young band like they are, I believe the future will promise much more for them. Despite some negative yet fair criticism that was thrown their way, the MIND YOUR... demo is a relatively good start from them with all those flaws in it, making some promises about this young Brazilian thrash outfit at least. But time will of course tell more how they can progress from this demo on. Just give it some time, dudes - and you´ll probably rip our hearts out some day. Fair enough? ;o)