Whenever I encountered a Technical/Progressive Thrash band, I'm baffled. This smarter, supposedly niftier young brother of the main genre always seems to be trying too hard. The foundations of this tricky musical approach and aesthetics are rooted back in the 1980's, with bands such as WATCHTOWER, MEKONG DELTA and TOXIK. Undoubtedly, those bands have talent in spades; but trying to squeeze their entire arsenal in every composition they author tends to disperse my attention and usually fails to impress me. No amount of technicality is paramount to good songwriting and construction, and overuse of technicality can easily beat its purpose. Assigned with the task of reviewing SKEPTIC SENSE's anthology released earlier this year by Divebomb Records, I had to take a deep breath and discard everything I had known in order to fully appreciate this offering for what it is.

Luckily, I was surprised for the better.

The short-lived SEKPTIC SENSE (initially called SLUGGARD) formed in 1987 in Germany and, aside from two demos, recorded only one full-length titled "Presence of Mind" in 1994. To me, their sound reminds me of DEPRESSIVE AGE more than anything else. Listening to this compilation, I could tell immediately that I was in good hands and got tickled in the right places by their fresh and energetic presentation. The entire CD is a riveting riff-fest from start to finish. Every now and then I was caught unprepared; the rhythm changes go off at a rapid pace. They sound very tight and their performance appears to be well-rehearsed before recording. On every bend they pull more tricks and throw curveballs, which kept me on my toes. The overall experience is very much like running for cover in a battlefield, zigzagging to avoid the exploding shells and ducking from time to time to escape snipers and machine guns. When you have finally found shelter behind a rock and try to catch some air, a ricochet is missing you by an inch and has you running once again.

Interesting as it may be, their music is nevertheless flawed for the reason I mentioned in the beginning of the review, although less than I initially feared. The ceaseless twists sometime create a plethora of elements that is too hard to digest at first listen. Only repeated listens have disabused me of the slight impression that they had actually recorded a warm-up session before rehearsal. The third time through the album unfolded a tasteful creativity and originality and the music started to grow on me. One more complaint is the vocals; they sound, if anything, pretty annoying. Cornelius Halder's delivery is on the falsetto side of the vocal range without any regulation even in the "quiet" parts. It sounds a bit like OVERKILL's Bobby Elsworth on "Taking Over", but it's tinnier or even wailing. Vocals aside, the band is shining and firing on all cylinders. Divebomb Records has done justice with the band by reviving its legacy and making it available again after the materials were out of print for more than 20 years.<