• 1
• 2
• 3
• 4
• 5

One of the most respected and popular Finnish thrash patrols, Terrific Verdict, decided to call it quits in 1990 after recording a couple of relatively widely circulated demos between 1988-89. There was quite a lot of frustration behind the band at that time, so they felt it was better to call it a day.

Fast forward to the year 2017: it was surprisingly announced Terrific Verdict were back again, after being deep-frozen for 27 friggin' long years. The guys knew there was some unfinished business to attend to, so here we are with the band's "long-awaited" debut album, Wheels of Fortune. Twelve of the songs are completely new and two songs are remakes from their first demo.

The band's partly later Slayer/early Sacred Reich-inspired thrash metal is made of relatively simple ingredients but they work well to their advantage. Some of the faster-paced songs ("Lazy Jack", "Caroline Reaper", "I Won't Drop a Tear" and the remake "The Mystery of Phantom", which still rips like it did back in the day), remind me of their past demo works when they were young, wild, ready to challenge the whole world and just bursting out testosterone, aggression and all these youths' growing pains when entering adult life. Also, the beginning of "Apprentice" brings Sacred Reich's "Death Squad" to mind. "Son of Satan (SOS)" is a pretty cool number, with riffs that all lead to Slayer's later direction. The remake of "No Return" still manages to kick the teeth back on your throat, just like in the early days of the band.

I find that some of the aggression of their earlier days is simply gone. That's something I've always liked about Terrific Verdict: pure, untamed aggression that created a certain magical and unmatched type of aura around them in the days when the tape-trading scene was blooming; the jolly good times before the Internet. So yeah, an extra dose of their old demo times' aggressive approach wouldn't have harmed them at all. In fact, the title track could have used a healthy dose of old-fashioned aggression as the song unfortunately sounds too sloppy, like nothing happens while it's trying to kick out from the speakers.

Nonetheless, Wheel of Fortune is a very good release. Then again, one may wonder: what if they had just rerecorded all of their twelve demo songs?