REASON

Reason is the second studio album from American progressive metal band Anacrusis. Their debut album called Suffering Hour was a raw thrash metal album with no progressive tendencies whatsoever, but with Reason the band shows us a more sophisticated side of themselves.

The music is still basically old school thrash metal ( Slayer, Metallica, Kreator, Sodom, Destruction, Testament, Xentrix, Vio-Lence and Forbidden just to mention a few) and IMO of the boring kind. What makes the music a bit out of the ordinary is the acoustic parts which appear in some songs. It kind of adds a progressive touch to the songs. The two longest songs on the album the opener Stop Me and Afraid to Feel are by far the most innovative songs here. The rest more or less sounds like most of the songs from Suffering Hour.

The musicianship is somewhat doubtful here. There is nothing wrong with the guitar and bass playing. Pretty well played thrash metal riffing, but the vocals from Kenn Nardi are not very good and his weird screams don´t fit the music very well. The terrible eighties drums are the worst part here though. Mike Owen does not know the word subtle. Everything is played loud and without much consideration for the other parts of the music. His playing really ruins the music IMO.

The production is terrible. The drums are too loud and the overall sound just comes out sounding weak and powerless. This was a common problem for many eighties thrash metal bands though.

Reason is not much better than Suffering Hour really, but we are introduced to the more innovative side of Anacrusis music and that´s a plus in my book. Reason doesn´t deserve much more than a 1 star rating, but as I do respect the urge to make innovative music I´ll give Reason 2 stars. I´m stretching though and I won´t recommend this album to anyone.