DAMIEN THORNE • The Sign Of The Jackal LP

Sunday, June 1, 2008

Roadrunner Records 1986
I have a feeling that these guys fancied themselves the American MERCYFUL FATE. If they did, they kinda pulled it off, cuz that's the first thing that came to mind when I put this record on. Of course no one can replicate the greatness of early MERCYFUL FATE (even MF themselves), but I think that's what they were aiming for. Plus, the singer's name is Justin Fate - a less than subtle nod to the great Danes? With song titles like "Hell's Reign" and "The Ritual", DAMIEN THORNE were trying their damnedest to appear evil and scary, and that's a good thing, cuz shamefully that kinda spooky lyrical nonsense was lost on most of their American counterparts. Unfortunately the production is too "soft" for a Metal record - there's lots of reverb, nothing sounds sharp or in your face, and as a result the record doesn't achieve total heaviosity. The songs, however, are full of great riffs, top notch performances (the drummer's excellent and the guitar solos are phenomenal), vocals that range from piercingly high to kinda gritty, and some really interesting parts. The intro to "The Ritual" is very cool (as is the rest of the song), and "Grim Reaper" is hard as nails too. In addition to MERCYFUL FATE, this record kinda reminds me of ABBATOIR's first album, and maybe fellow Chicagans (is that the right word?) THRUST, but that might just be cuz they're from the same city. All in all, an excellent US Metal record... downloading is recommended - not leaving a comment is not!
DOWNLOAD: Damien Thorne - The Sign Of The Jackal.rar (61.65 MB)

8 comments:

Erich said...

The download didn't work ....

Anonymous said...

Shit! I'll check the .rar and re-upload asap.

Anonymous said...

Alright... I made a new .rar and reposted it - hopefully it's OK now.

Erich said...

I think it was the missing ending (.rar). Same problem with your bands record. But I managed to add the .rar manually and now it works. Will check the soundfiles tomorrow.

Anonymous said...

What the eff!?! I'll have to redo that one too. I noticed when I redid the DAMIEN THORNE .rar that it was 10MB larger thn the first one I posted. So there's a good chance that THE FANGS' .rar will be missing some information.

Anonymous said...

So I dunno exactly what's going on, but I'm trying to sort it out. I think it might be a browser issue, cuz when I download the files using Firefox, the file name is truncated, but with Internet Explorer they're fine. I dunno what's changed, but I've asked Mediafire to help sort it out.

Anonymous said...

Wow, Mediafire is fast! Apparently they're aware of the "glitch" and are trying to fix it. The temporary solution is to manually add the .rar extension.

VimFuego said...

pretty cool shit. his vox occasionally remind me of Russ from Forbidden.