Canadian metal trio Exciter (originally known as Hell Razor), founded in Ontario in 1979 and almost certainly named after their infamous show opening Judas Priest track, made their presence known with some gut crunching metal blessed by the raucous vocals of drummer Dan Beehler.
Exciter planned on re-recording archive tracks for a 2003 career retrospective album. An all-out Thrash Metal assault on the senses, this record is anything but fancy.
Paul Champagne exited the band that June. The band's next move, delegating the bass role to John Ricci for studio purposes, would be to re-record early material for a retrospective compilation. This set, comprising re-visited material from 1983's Heavy Metal Maniac, 1984's Violence and Force, 1985's Long Live the Loud, 1992's Kill after Kill 1997's The Dark Command and even as recent as 2000's Blood of Tyrants, would emerge with the title New Testament - Coven Of Re-Recorded Classics.
15 re-recorded tracks (ten classics, five recent) from all the eras of Exciter make up the album, due out through Osmose in May 2004. Exciter guitarist John Ricci says, that the record has better production and is more pleasurable to listen to than their early records and I have to agree with him. Ricci has taken care of all the guitar and bass duties. The remaining current lineup includes singer Jacque Belanger and drummer Rick Charron.
Annotating the songs would be aimless since we are talking about an album with re-recorded songs. Would be better if we just focused on the production, which is excellent. All the old songs sound more powerful and raw than ever, and the new tracks are following the familiar Exciter aggressive style. Pounding Metal is still my favorite track of this great band and I am happy it's included in this release, cause it sounds really massive.
If you haven't heard of Exciter before then I suggest you buy this release. Now, if you are familiar with Exciter then I also suggest you buy this release. Don't ask why... history is something that every new metal fan has to learn and every old metal fan has to remember. For sure Exciter is part of the history and I hope the band has more to teach us yet.