Toronto
Under Siege
Encompassing the strides they made across their two demos, TORONTOs first longer-playing record is a rush of weird n wild speed metal heavily informed by hardcore punk. Put simply, one could imagine the sound of Under Siege as greased-up NWOBHM colliding headlong into early Razor and Warfare, but overseen by Inepsy, mid 80s Discharge, and even Howard Benson-era Motorhead. Shit shreds, fast and free, each raucous-yet-rockin section charging into the night but equally exuding an unselfconsciously subtle minimalism that somehow gets these eight bangers over and done with in an average of barely two minutes each. Put another way, one could also imagine the zombified spirit of Morbus Chron holding court here, in the sense that that band both embodied and defied death metal; TORONTO similarly does such with speed metal, but again renders it into an alternately ideal/oblique form thats entirely theirs - and this is just the start