Back in the beginning of the nineties things weren’t that rosey in the, already then, legendary German Thrash Metal force DESTRUCTION. It ended up with bassist / vocalist Schmier being kicked out of the band and replaced with POLTERGEIST screamer André Greider, who did a great job on the quite rocking “Cracked Brain” album. Then André was replaced by EPHEMERA’S PARTY vocalist Thomas Rosenmerkel on the quite off the wall (NEO-)DESTRUCTION album “The Least Successful Human Cannonball”. That didn’t really work out in any way. Fast forward to a year later and a little bit of making up in the band. Schmier is back in DESTRUCTION and so is the mad butcher, who we first met on the band’s first demo in 1984. Back in 1999 a new demo was released with the slashing title track ‘The Butcher Strikes Back’ and so did DESTRUCTION. The last decade was forgotten. That track together with a re-recording of ‘Bestial Invasion’, originally from the band’s first full length “Infernal Overkill” (and “Bestial Invasion Of Hell” demo – Frank) and the other new track, ‘World Domination Of Pain’. The demo paid off, the band got signed by Nuclear Blast and both, ‘The Butcher Strikes Back’ and ‘World Domination Of Pain’, were featured on “All Hell Breaks Loose”, the first album on the big German label, which marked DESTRUCTION back on track as the one of the kings of the Teutonic Four. On top of the three demo tracks we get three bonus tracks, that so far only have been on Japanese releases from the band: ‘Shellshock’ from the NWOBHM stalwarts TANK, ‘We Are The Roadcrew’ from the mighty MOTÖRHEAD and ‘The Alliance Of Hellhoundz’ with Schmier handling all of the vocals, compared to the version on “Inventor Of Evil” with a star parade of vocalists. Besides those three tracks we get a part of the band’s set from Wacken 2002 (the full set was originally released exclusively in Japan on the “Alive Devastation” CD – Frank), as if we hadn’t enough live material from DESTRUCTION floating around. It is awesome to have “The Butcher Strikes Back” demo on an official release, though with all the material the band has made during the times, I reckon it would have been possible for them to deliver some more interesting tunes for the extra material, though it might all have been used on different occasions. Major thumbs up for the demo, big thumbs up for the cover versions and well, the rest are fillers in my humble opinion. Enter the Thrash attack at: www.facebook.com/destruction, label contact: www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100063485232579