Another old school gem gets some love in form of a re-release via High Roller Records. I speak about the second release of US Death / Thrash commando INCUBUS, who had to rename the band to OPPROBRIUM due to legal issues in the mid ’90s. “Beyond The Unknown” was released back in 1990 via Nuclear Blast and delivers an old school wrecking ball somewhere between Death and Thrash Metal. The band around the Howard brothers unfortunately never managed to step out of the underground, even though their first two releases under their old moniker are considered as cult in the underground. I like their mixture of Death and Thrash Metal very much even though the Death Metal influences are dominant on this release. It has been a long while since I listened to the material the last time and I must admit that the material aged very well. On “Beyond The Unknown” everything fits together. Songwriting, instrumentation, cover artwork. The songwriting is very aggressive but also very technical and fans of old DEICIDE, SADUS, old SEPULTURA, MORBID ANGEL and OBITUARY surely have this gem in their collection. If not, it is definitely worth to get this album, as it has no flaws and is still aggressive as fuck. The vocals are harsh and somewhere between Death and Thrash Metal. The drumming is tight as hell, with cool breaks and an ever-pounding bass-drum. Also the riffing is simply brilliant. Check out ‘Curse Of The Damned Cities’ and you will know what aggression is. But also the title track or ‘Massacre Of The Unborn’ are strong tracks with strong lyrical content so while gore themes were popular back in the days, the guys took a similar way than KREATOR and already dealt with more difficult topics around life. The production is clear and powerful and a piece of evidence for its time. High Roller also included the demo of the album on this re-release which offers far rawer versions of the tracks but the demo already shows that they had a clear vision how the tracks should sound like. Only the vocals are rawer and somehow remind me of old SEPULTURA. I can only recommend this album to all Death / Thrash fans of the ’90s and feel the pressure to get one of the cool vinyl versions from High Roller. More info can be found here: www.facebook.com/opprobriumofficial, www.facebook.com/hrrecords