Hirax - Thrash 'Til Death
To be honest with all of you I’d never heard of Hirax before so I had to do some research on them before I watched the DVD. Hirax is a Thrash Metal band from Los Angeles and was founded in the early eighties. They were a part of the famous Bay Area scene at that time and they even resided at Metal Blade for two records. In 1988 the vocalist left the band and was briefly replaced by Paul Baloff from Exodus. That line up lasted until 1989 when the band fell apart and it was in the year 2000 that Hirax came back together and even recorded a new album along the way. Nowadays six years after the reunion of Hirax there’s even a DVD from Hirax with a complete concert registration of their performance at the Minneapolis Mayhem Festival 2005.
This concert starts with an intro and after that an instrumental song where the sound engineer made some adjustments for the rest of the show. With ‘Blind Faith’ the show got finally started and immediately Hirax seeks the contact with the audience. Only there is one slight problem: there aren’t that much people in the venue during the entire show.
Of course that doesn’t stop Hirax with their old school Thrash Metal mix of Exodus, the old Metallica and some of the old Megadeth.
The quality of the DVD is certainly not great. The show is shot from three camera angles, one in the back of the venue and the other two besides the stage. These camera men are just doing their work very laid back because every shot is way too static. There’s hardly any action from the camera men, even some of the shots in the special features are better.
Yeah what about the special features? The special features contain recordings of some of the gigs Hirax played in Europe and the U.S. and an interview with the band that was held in Sweden. In a way it’s strange to see that the atmosphere in most of the special features recordings is way better then during the Minneapolis show. Besides all the recordings and the interview there’s also a list of all the material Hirax ever released on the special features.
Overall Thrash Till Death is not a great DVD, the performance of Hirax is most of the time great but the atmosphere amongst the audience is pretty lame. Besides that the quality is also not great, the shots are way too static and the picture quality is also pretty flatten. The special features on this DVD are nice too see but that’s all, they don’t add anything to the DVD. So if you are a fan of the band I’d say check it out for anybody else keep you hard earned money in your pocket.
Tracklisting
Line up