25 years is a milestone to achieve in any industry- especially keeping things together in any type of band situation. France's NO RETURN celebrate this anniversary with a series of reissues from their early years- and this debut album "Psychological Torment" that originally hit the market in 1990 showcases a young band hungry to display their Thrash ways with a primal production to keep things fresh and exciting.

Overall these 10 songs display a quintet willing to crossover the landscape of their European heritage and the far reaching impact that the Bay Area movement provided to all. The background-gang vocals give off an EXODUS meets DEATH ANGEL flair while the main vocals of Alain Clement resemble a lower pitch mix of Mille from KREATOR and Max of SEPULTURA. Musically NO RETURN lived at the time for a speedy riff outlook, only giving the listeners brief mid-tempo transitional pauses to develop more intense impact passages.

Standouts include the almost 6 minute "Degeneration of the Last Decade" which would have been ideal to appear on "Terrible Certainty" from KREATOR and the spider web weaving riff antics on the follow up "Nightly Aggression" that would induce incessant head banging from early TESTAMENT fans.  Most who grew up through this movement will also be pleased to hear the natural bass and drum sounds on this recording- promoting the human element that propelled thrash throughout the underground and helped it explode on a global scale.

The bonus cut is a live rendition of the album track "Vision of Decadence" - so outside of hearing Alain's French spoken words of energy encouragement to the crowd, there isn't really much 'added' value outside of the fact that I would imagine this isn't an easy album to find 24 years down the road. Considering my love for this genre, NO RETURN display all the necessary skills to gain modest appeal with those into non-compromising songs and easy to ingest gang-oriented choruses.

If you grow tired of the new generation of Thrash and need a throwback to the first wave, "Psychological Torment" isn't a bad album to scoop up.