Old gods of Chicago death metal Cianide have been giving their 90s albums a second life recently. Deathgasm Records reissued debut The Dying Truth and Dark Descent reissued sophomore effort A Descent into Hell back in 2012, and now Hell’s Headbangers is following the trend by regifting us with the 1997 album Death, Doom and Destruction. The album was already a threatening slab of primitive extremity, and the reissue has extended the dread by appending a set of five demos (Rage War) and a 7″ (The Truth) that includes a Master cover of the same name.
Cianide bassist/vocalist Mike Perun had this to say about his take on the album then and now:
“Death, Doom and Destruction. This was our transitional record, in which we definitely amped up the Destruction to our well-honed death and doom metal of our first two albums. Listening to it now, back then this is the band Scott and I always thought we sounded like – or more likely wanted to sound like, but were not as well seasoned in our playing as we thought we were. The addition of Andy on drums and Jim on secon guitar definitely helped speed up that evolutionary process – and our song tempos. Not to mention our alcoholism…
“Revisiting this record isn’t anything of a new revelation for us though, since half of these songs we jam regularly to this day. ‘Rage War’ is our standard live set opener. ‘Metal Never Bends’ is our caveman, skull bashing, metal anthem and ‘Envy and Hatred’ is still probably my favorite song we’ve ever written. So in honor of the Hell’s Headbangers deluxe re-reissue we’ll be playing all of Death, Doom and Destruction in its entirety, with the same exact 4-piece line-up exclusively at Hell’s Headbash 2 this coming Labor Day weekend. [Here’s a link to buy tickets for that Cleveland 3-day festival.]
“Taste some CIANIDE and fucking die!!!”
