Extinction Agenda - Inter Arma Silent Leges

Visceral Circuitry's reissue of Extinction Agenda's 2005 Demo and 2006's The Grace Defile EP should be on all die-hard thrash fan's radar. While the 2005 Demo is techy thrash with a strangely primitive attitude, the tracks on The Grace Defile speak towards a project that was heading 'Towards One Goal' (a reference if you can guess it). In sight was the potential masterful mixing of Coroner style rhythms and and tone with Voivod-esque weirdness and aesthetics. Imagine a mashup of No More Color or Mental Vortex with Killing Technology. The fuse on such magic is short and unfortunately, before Extinction Agenda could set down an albums worth of tracks, they had blown themselves into a billion pieces, scattering into other projects. Extinction Agenda shared members of December Wolves and the fallout from that band lingers in the music of Extinction Agenda, but with Thrash elements emphasized and a de-emphasized Black Metal and Industrial façade. Listeners into Old School Thrash will find something of significant interest here. 

The 2005 Demo tracks offer a stripped down raw and primitive take on the tech-thrash genre. The Coroner influence is in full glory here. Dark Angel pace speed is on display as well. In many ways, the tracks are reminiscent of off-beat on-the-cusp thrash bands and albums like Holy Terror's Mind Wars or Living Death's Worlds Neurosis. This demo is the product of the duo of Scott DeFusco and Scott Iconslaughter with both sharing guitar and bass duties but Drums and Vocals being handled singularly, Vocals by Iconslaughter, and Drums by Defusco. Samples of horror movies open two of the tracks with "Inter Arma Silent Leges" opening with samples from Bloody Pit Of Horror and "Creature of Unconscious Design" borrowing from Wishmaster 2. Both are fast with memorable main riffs and motifs, such as the bizarre harmonized middle section of "Creature of Unconscious Design". Of the three tracks from this demo, though, it is "Trafficking Apathy" which speaks most to me. Opening with a severely memorable intro riff, and leading straight into a verse and atonal or chromatic chorus, the song's melodic awkwardness creates a lot of tension which never really releases it's grip on the listener. Iconslaughter's vocals on the track are venomous and serpentine.  

As good as the 2005 Demo tracks are, it is the four tracks from The Grace Defile EP which showcase the potential which Extinction Agenda was close to grasping. The EP proves they were ahead-of-the-pack in 2006 doing their stripped down and simplified Voivod and Coroner inspired thrash. Extinction Agenda were keen to veer towards shorter more direct and focused songwriting compared to the more progressive compositions which Vektor had started tinkering with around the same time and which would shortly thereafter help re-popularize the off-beat Voivod / Tech-Thrash genre on 2009's Black Future. With the slightly shorter, more refined songwriting, tracks such as "Methadrine Angel" and "Mock Samaritan" in particular offer inventive and original thrash. Initiating with "Patron Saint of Chainsaws" the thin scraping guitar tone and prominent swarming of hornets bass tone punctuates the unique organic production. DeFusco has shifted entirely to drums, a shift yielding more interesting and adventurous drumming. Iconslaughter once again reminds me of Ron Royce however he has added a more extreme element to the vocals. 

This is a tape I really enjoyed going through. Instrumental sections throughout the seven tracks highlight left-field arrangement ideas and compositional intelligence. Subtlety abounds in many places, such as the harmonized leads and big breakdown section in "Methadrine Angel". Lyrically, Extinction Agenda also leave hints and drips of where they are conceptually and thematically engaged, while being not so vague as to leave no idea of where the audience should be directing thought. "Patron Saint of Chainsaws" finds the listener correlating the serial killer or pyschopath's need to kill with religious imagery of Communion and the blood of Christ. "Mock Samaritan" approaches the insincerity of religious charity directly. As someone who prefers a more vicious political, ideological, and aggressive slant in my Thrash themes, the content sticks. I wish the leads and solos were more prominent in the mix.

Extinction Agenda offer something impressive and rewarding musically to discerning thrash fans. The Visceral Circuitry release of the demos is done well with the standard J-card plus two panel layout. The backside of the J-Card is not used to full effect, as I would have liked to see lyrics reprinted or band photos included. We are given instead a repeating pattern of the band's logo. It's a typical tape release but to get the material out physically is a major plus. It would be a shame for this material to be left to rot somewhere. Extinction Agenda's 2005 Demo was released on Nihilistic Holocaust as a split with Oppression (or so it seems) and re-released as their own demo on CD afterwards. The tracks from the The Grace Defile EP were also released on CD in who-knows-what quantity independently. I'm glad that Visceral Circuitry (sub label of Nihilistic Holocaust) accumulated the additional four tracks and released them. I see myself coming back now and then. "Trafficking Apathy" and "Methadrine Angel" go into the favorite's playlist.