From a change of scenery to an adjustment of a musical approach, it is always interesting to check the outcome of that. Life's trials and personal experiences can be wholly influential on a person for better or worse, and when on a known musician that has been putting up a certain act, it can also go either way. A disturbing occurrence happened to KILLERS right before their sophomore album, "Menace To Society", hit the streets. Right before heading back for the UK to work on the album, Paul Di'Anno was arrested in the US for crimes relating to drugs and arms possession, locking him up for three months. Later on, Di'Anno was deported from the US back to the UK, leaving him angry and hurt. Following his anguish state, KILLERS went through a musical change along with a blistering shift in attitude. Even with his anger on the American authorities, together with his jail time experiences, Di'Anno brought from the US the weighty non conformism and groovy nature of PANTERA and its rising star peer at that time, MACHINE HEAD. Both bands in the early 90's were on the rise with PANTERA astounding the worldwide scene with creative Groove / Thrash Metal and the newly found MACHINE HEAD slowly beginning to be recognized as the next flame in modern Thrash Metal. Therefore, as it would seem, the nifty Heavy Metal determination KILLERS of "Murder One", flipped over, turning into a chug, groovy and heavily Americanized form of Di'Anno's short fuse, criticism and loathsome antagonism.

I remember the first time I heeded to this album more than a decade ago and I couldn't believe what I was tuning to. At some point I thought that I was listening to whole new different band with Di'Anno singing, but it was nothing of sort, it was KILLERS alright. Depraving the lyricism of the tunes with "F" words and cheap gangster tough guy street talk and swagger, the accompanying KILLERS's sounded thicker and denser, robust, chopping with crushing low end riffs brimming with groove, greasy drumming of slow to mid tempo, and there are Di'Anno's vocals also altered a bit to capture the low life street type figure, like an American hoodlum with a bandana on his head. The known sentence "Same, but different" would come in handy observing this album. In comparison to "Murder One", which appeared to me as a continuance of Di'Anno's old BATTLEZONE from the 80's and actually suited this sort of impressive late 80's British Metal, "Menace To Society", nearly on its whole, it a raggedy wannabe wishful thinking to become the trend that was achieved by PANTERA. It would seem that the band closely lost its British heritage paving way to what the Metal world became through the early and mid-90's, as Hardcore and groove kind of Metal music swept the scenes. This new album concentrated mainly of PANTERA driven riffs, which applied for KILLERS's lack of originality or sense of preservation or intentness as for instance, quite a critical one, "Die By The Gun" is a mere clone of "Mouth Of War" off the "Vulgar Display Of Power" release. It is like listening to a band composing material that doesn't suit them at all. You might call it experimentation, yet why treading in those fields in the first place. Di'Anno's distress is completely understandable; however it should have concerned the band.

The heavy barrage of "Chemical Imbalance", though appearing as another sort of an American duplicate, turned out to be quite good with several shreds of vibrant groovy Heavy Metal with wrecks of slamming Thrash. The ALEX HARVEY BAND cover of "Faith Healer" was surprising and awfully awkward; nonetheless, it was nicely performed and carried out. Simple riffery, wonderful solo effort by TANK's Cliff Evans. Sometimes Di'Anno sounded like Alice Cooper, or a psycho loon, that added to this song's eeriness, though a decent vocal display. However, at times it wearied me with its length, too much reprise of the chorus. "Conscience" has peeps of the early KILLERS' plan of action, though rather slowly it put out its new facial stare but with a fusion of an 80's ACCEPTish splinters hiding in the shadows of the riffing. Frankly, I took me a while, even after all these years, to accept these songs, as it went against everything that this band stood for in the past, as a sort of a supergroup. You can judge by the pretentious "City Of Fools" where Di'Anno is rapping his way into mockery with a music that resembled AEROSMITH's own mock moment with "Walk This Way". Finally there are the additions of Metal Mind Productions of live rehearsal tunes that didn't make any difference for this about to be disbanded KILLERS.