Band:	Tyrannic Ethical Reconstruction
Album:	Pictures From The War
Style:	Death metal, Thrash metal
Release date:	February 2005

01. The Bullets' Rain
02. Pure Violence
03. Terrorist
04. Testament Of Decadence
05. Bleeds For War

T.E.R? This strange acronym, beside being the name of French regional trains, stands for Tyrannic Ethical Reconstruction and is the name chosen by four young Italians for their thrash death band. I have no real idea what Tyrannic Ethical Reconstruction means, but there's one thing I know: considering that this band exists since September 2004 only, this demo - their first - is, let's say it, impressive.

"Pictures From The War" is a kind of concept based on the misery, the pain and the emotions aroused by war. To illustrate this concept the band have chosen to include excerpts from various war movies (namely Saving Private Ryan and The Thin Red Line. There's also a passage from The Fifth Element, which is not a war movie but is here nonetheless). Then, to illustrate the concept further on, they chose to blast our fucking brains out with their heavy, or better, extremely heavy brand of thrash death metal. So what we get here is incisive leads, neckbreaking riffs and surprising tempo changes.

It is indeed most amazing to see the quality of the songwriting in such a young band. Usually, you take whichever young inexperienced band you want after roughly one year of existence and you find them still stammering their first own riffs. After one year, T.E.R. sound as if they've put a great deal (years) of thought into this demo. The sound is great, the music is good, catchy, sometimes mesmerizing ('Bleeds For War') and always interesting. It is not original per se, I mean there are millions of bands playing that kind of thrash death, but believe me, they're better than most of the rest.

Besides, they have something special: their vocals are? bizarre. Ok these are regular growls, but it's not the kind of vocals that is strange. The pronunciation is. I've already heard some death or grind bands use those "groovy growls", but it still sounds pretty weird to me. It is as if the growls were just another instrument of the rhythm section. Anyway, that's a nice feature, I hope they don't get rid of it.

Enough said, this is good stuff. I'd like to bet we'll hear of them in the near future, but the metal market is so merciless that even the best can fail. Anyway, they've just released another demo that I wish is as good as this one but it's still time to get Picture From The War. Very interesting.

Highlights: Pure Violence, Bleeds For War