Sometimes you get a real surprise when you start listening to an album that you received for reviewing. That definitely happened to me when I got to hear “Ariah” by ARIAH. I was completely blown away by the fact that it was a very clear Thrash Metal album that was blowing through my headphones, albeit with a very poor production. After seeing the rather tame cover photo I expected a Hard Rock album in the vein of BAD COMPANY or something similar. I couldn’t find much about the band until I encountered their Bandcamp site, which stated: In 1989, three 16-year-olds and one 14-year-old hunkered down in a suburban recording studio by the name of Shadow Productions outside of Chicago, run by two guys with Romantics-style hair-do's, to put down 8 original songs they had been working on for the previous 9 months - an eternity in high school years - in just two days. They could smoke cigarettes and feel like real metal guys. They were hooked. ARIAH, a band literally named after both SLAYER's Tom Araya and classical "arias", was forged in a basement in Hoffman Estates on Sunday's while Dad watched golf on the other side of the ceiling. These were straight A nerd kids, too smart for their own good, getting high and getting anxious about the state of the world.

About the music on “Ariah”, it is pure Thrash, but I wouldn’t compare it to SLAYER. The band that comes to mind all through the record is SACRED REICH. ARIAH plays music in the style as “Ignorance” and “The American Way” had. To be honest, I was waiting for “Surf Nicaragua” to be played at any time. And yes, even the quality of the songs justifies this comparison, as everything that these guys have put on “Ariah” is bloody marvellous. All this made me realise that the dull, flat and monotonous sound was due to the era this was recorded and the limited sources ARIAH was able to dig into. I just have to concur that I am quite smitten with “Ariah” and would have liked to hear more of these guys. I am glad that Someoddpilot Records took the plunge and decided to rerelease this 35-year-old gem. This happened on November 1, 2024. The only drawback is that I was not able to find any videos of ARIAH, so you won’t find one accompanying this review. Oh, and for the Dutchies amongst us, even Aardschok Magazine is mentioned in the song “Disintegration”.