SHORT BUT SWEET: MAZE OF TERROR — “SKULLCRUSHER”

For the music reviewed in this post, we need to turn back the clock. In the first place, the music was released more than two years ago, in June 2012. In the second place, the unholy spirit that surges through the songs is older still — much older — but it’s no less ferocious and its appetite for destruction is still insatiable.

The band’s name is Maze of Terror and they’re based in Lima, Peru. Their sole output to date consists of a five-song EP entitled Skullcrusher, and points must be awarded for truth in advertising: This EP is one hell of a skull crusher.

I could tell you this music is the kind of throat-throttling, honestly deviant, impeccably executed thrash that would have been right at home on mix-tapes from 30 years ago that people are still talking about today. Or I could tell you this:

 

photo by César Augusto

 

It’s like one of those vehicular muscle machines from the Road Warrior movie that couldn’t be killed, except instead of heating cracked asphalt in the Australian outback, this super-charged Interceptor is hurtling down the corpse-strewn streets of a post-apocalyptic urban wasteland. In fleeting glances, you see mountains of rubble on the sidewalks and the rictus of the desiccated dead, their curled claws beckoning at the sky in their final extremity.

What the hell, let your own imaginations do the work for you — I’m only speaking of mine. In more mundane terms, this EP is a cavalcade of unstoppable riffs, completely eye-opening solos that don’t sound like solos you might expect on a corrupting old-school thrash album, and vocals that still make you ask, after all your experience, did he really eat a virgin’s heart before spewing that shit into the mic? Because it sure sounds like it.

This is thrash for people (like me) who now yawn at references to The Big Four and got bored with re-thrash about five minutes after it started. Skullcrusher is electrifying. It’s vicious, it’s destructive, it’s a ticket straight  to headbang city.

I don’t know what the fuck is in Lima’s water (though if I don’t drink it there myself some day I’ll consider that one of my life’s failures), but Maze of Terror have ingested some kind of wondrous poison. How else do you come so close to a classic which sounds like something that should have been released before most of you lads and lasses were even born?

 

Hail Satan, Maze of Terror tell us that they are working on a new album. Here are two songs from the EP. I wish I could tell you how to acquire all five of them. Maybe if we get enough clamoring in the comments, the band could be convinced to put the whole thing up on Bandcamp for download.

https://www.facebook.com/mazeofterrorthrash
http://www.mazeofterror.bandcamp.com