Celebrating the 10 year anniversary of Evil Never Dies, his vinyl debut as Toxic Holocaust, Joel Grind issued a career spanning retrospective (From the Ashes of Nuclear Destruction) back in March. More recently, Hell's Headbangers reissued a single platter discography of his side project with Abigail's Yasuyuki Suzuki, Tiger Junkies. Oh yeah, that doesn't even count The Yellowgoat Sessions which Grind released as a solo project back in January. Needless to say, the man was already having a prolific year before it was announced that a new Holocaust album would be released just in time for (Holo)ween.
With so many recent outlets to indulge his various influences, it should come as no surprise that Chemistry of Consciousness is even more fundamentalist in its scrappy thrash mission statement than even 2011's Conjure and Command. All 11 tracks here make midtempo 2011 entries like "Red Winter" and "Nowhere to Run" sound like White Lion songs by comparison. Grind's vocals are notably more overdriven here, mixed at truly mic-shredding levels by Kurt Ballou.
That raspy fuzz translates to the guitar tone as well, but in spite of the overall sound having the intended aesthetic of an early Venom demo, Ballou captures the raw punk-like energy without giving it a basement-tape quality. Everything is louder than everything else, yet there's a finesse in instrumental separation that is damn near idealistic for Grind's artistic temperament. Jesus, just check out that filthy ass riff at the :36 mark of "Out of the Fire":
Though hardly the most "well-rounded" of the Toxic Holocaust albums to date, Chemistry of Consciousness has a singular focus that finds Joel Grind seemingly reinvigorated. As the sub-subgenre of neo-thrash increasingly threatens to disappear up its own ass, Grind solves the saturation problem by retreating that much further into first wave UK hardcore, specifically d-beat: Nikki Rage's heavy handed beats bear the stamp of Hear Nothing See Nothing Say Nothing more often than Kill 'Em All, that's for sure.
Grind also takes a page out of the punk playbook in terms of brevity; the one-dimensional nature of the album could be problematic if it weren't for the easily absorbed run time of 28 minutes. That length is nearly identical to Reign in Blood, an album that was so notoriously trenchant that the entire track list was repeated in full on both sides of the cassette.
Stopping short of a full apples-to-apples comparison, Chemistry of Consciousness is that type of album: trenchant and unapologetic in its lack of versatility, this is a bottled up riot distilled into musical form.
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