Witchburner "Witchburner / Blasphemic Assault" CD Digipack

Issued as a digipak.
The catalogue number is listed as ESR 006-6 on the spine and as ESR 006-1 on the disc.
The track durations are not listed on the release.

Sticker on the packaging:
The first Album of Germany's leading Thrash Maniacs including their second attack on one disk!!!
From the back cover Limited to 2000 copies!

It's a curious thing, the concept of conventional wisdom. Taken even in moderate doses, it can plant false impressions in the mind such as governments caring about the people subject to them, wars being fought for the sake of peace, and the idea that thrash metal died at some point between 1992 and 1994. Granted, the latter scenario had some truth to it if speaking in terms of some or even most of the scene dying, but interestingly enough a new generation cropped up in Germany and the Scandinavian region at around the same time that Sodom churned out the destructive beast that was "Tapping The Vein" and Demolition Hammer destroyed the unbelievers with their magnum opus "Epidemic Of Violence", and one of the German adherents that popped up was the still very underground Teutonic semi-tribute band Witchburner.
While it is easy to note the very close proximity that this band's self-titled debut has with the ultra-aggressive albums mentioned previously, this album actual hearkens back a bit closer to the earlier days of the German response to Slayer and Possessed, with Kreator being the dominant influence. The overall production quality hints at a fairly strong Sodom influence, and the riff work occasionally has some occasional moments where Blackfire is more of an influence in the mold of "Agent Orange" than Petrozza's signature handiwork, but otherwise the general tone of this album reaches back to a middle ground between "Endless Pain" and "Pleasure To Kill", largely drawing from the former insofar as the primitive and simplistic nature of the songwriting goes, but also exhibiting the chaotic character of the latter, especially in terms of the way the drums meld in with the rest of the arrangement.
Ideologically it's fairly easy to fall in love with an album like this given its brave refusal to submit to the ongoing groove saturation of the mid-90s, but like a fair number of debut albums with limited production and green musicians, it falls short of being an absolute masterpiece. While definitely having a lot of edge and bite to them, not to mention a solid low end growler in Tankred Best (who also handles the drums), these songs are pretty limited in scope and repetitive. There are some really good ideas going on, but often times they are simply banged out over and over with very little variation. Arguably the best song on here "Fight To Be The Winner" has a really strong intro riff that has a slightly menacing, early Overkill feel to it, but they hold onto it a little too long and when things finally shift to a different set of ideas, it's quite predictable and usually bereft of any sense of transition.
Of Witchburner's collective and still growing discography, this one is pretty difficult to find, but it's also one of their weakest. There isn't really much on here that can't be heard in a much more polished form on Kreator's early releases, let alone the growing batch of imitators out there that have also drawn heavy influence from them. Historically this album functions almost like a lone thrash apostle in the wilderness, keeping the message alive, but being pretty well detached from all the bustle going on in the rest of the metal world at this juncture, which was much more focused on groove, sludge and brutality (save the post-2nd wave crowd that was picking up steam but still pretty well underground). It's an acceptable album, and also a respectable one given its organic sense of non-conformity.

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