THE DYSENTERY PENANCE

"The Dysentery Penance" is a compilation album by Dutch death/thrash metal act Pestilence. The compilation was released through Vic Records in November 2015. It´s a compilation of the material from the band´s two pre-album demo cassette tapes "Dysentery" and "The Penance" (both originally released in 1987), and two live tracks recorded in Eibergen in 1988. Both live tracks appear in their studio version on "The Penance" demo. The material on the 10 track, 41:35 minutes long demo has been remastered by Dan Swanö at Unisound Studios.

Pestilence is mostly known as a death metal act, and later a technical/progressive death metal act, but on these early demos they played a raw type of thrash metal, which sounds like it´s greatly influenced by "Hell Awaits (1985)"-era Slayer and artists like Sodom and Kreator. So basically old school thrash metal in the brutal and aggressive end of the scale.

The 4 tracks from the "Dysentery" demo are relatively simple, predominantly fast-paced, and aggressive thrash metal tracks, while the 4 tracks (one is a short intro) from "The Penance" demo are slightly more advanced, but still old school raw and aggressive thrash metal. While it´s both raw, brutal, and aggressive there are only few nods toward death metal on the demos. The death metal elements are mostly heard on the tracks from "The Penance". The two live tracks feature a raw bootleg type sound quality and are not the most interesting material on the compilation. The material from both studio demos is relatively well produced considering that it´s thrash metal demo material from 1987. The remaster sound is a little more "polished" and well defined, than the sound on the original cassette tape demos.

So "The Dysentery Penance" is a bit of a mixed bag but if you´re interested in the early beginnings of death metal and raw 80s thrash metal in general I´ve heard worse releases in the genre. Especially the material from "The Penance" is worth a listen. A 3 star (60%) rating is warranted.