Artist: Dead Head
Album: Kill Division
Label: Petrichor / Napalm Records
Release Date: 30/10/2020
Country: Netherlands
So today we take a look at a classic album that was originally released 21 years ago, but has been given new life. We love having excuses to cover older albums that we’re passionate about and Petrichor and Napalm Records re-releasing a remastered version of Dead Head’s Kill Division on vinyl (for the first time) and dual CD with slipcase has given us an excuse to talk about this gem. This won’t be a long review, because this album has been covered by so many other sites over the years, but we just had to say a few words.
If you don’t know Dead Head, the band formed back in 1989 in Kampen, Netherlands and remain active to this day with a number of releases under their belts. The band play an aggressive, high energy blend of death and thrash metal. Just because there have been some line-up changes over the years I’m going to state who was in the band at the time that the album was originally released, we had Tom van Dijk (vocals, bass), Ronnie Vanderwey (guitars), Robbie Woning (guitars) and Hans Spijker (drums).
As mentioned the album originally came out in 1999 through Cold Blood Industries but is now being released through Petrichor, following it being restored and remastered by Bertus Westerhuis, who has also worked with God Dethroned, Nembrionic and Altar to name a few. After this reworking it was released digitally on all platforms back in June.
The album is a furious blend between death and thrash metal that was full of brutal riffs, pounding drums and aggressive vocals. The release completely held its own against its peers at the time of release, however it never achieved widespread recognition due to poor promotion and distribution at its time of release. So, here’s hoping that this release will help to get the album the attention that it deserves.
The release is made up of 21 tracks, 9 of which are demo versions, coming in at 64 minutes in total. That’s quite a lengthy offering considering how aggressive and fast paced this album is. The band perfectly blend thrash level energy with death metal aggression and rawness. The guitar tone sits somewhere between the two depending on which way the riffs are leaning, and they do vary a lot between OSDM style guitar work and raw and aggressive thrash in the vein of Kreator, Sodom, Demolition Hammer or Morbid Saint. The release is chocked full of headbangable moments and would make for a killer live show.
While the whole album is solid, the highlights on the album for me are definitely track 2 Cold Being, track 6 Sprayed Into Oblivion, track 7 Wings of Fire and track 10 Until the Sun Appears. track 12 Heavy Metal Thunder happens to be a Saxon cover and is also a lot of fun.
So as I mentioned we aren’t going to go into a ton of detail breaking this one down, all we want is to put the word out there that this classic album is back and those who missed it before finally have a chance to get into it and get a copy of it. So, make sure to check the album out below and get your copy:
Bandcamp:
Spotify:
Order your copy on vinyl:
http://b2b.napalmrecords.com/b2b_english/kill-division-red-vinyl.html
http://b2b.napalmrecords.com/b2b_english/kill-division-black-vinyl.html
Order your copy on CD:
http://b2b.napalmrecords.com/b2b_english/kill-division-slipcase-2-cd.html
