Best to worst:

1. Evil Invaders
2. Decibels
3. Violent Restitution
4. Open Hostility
5. Cycle of Contempt
6. Malicious Intent
7. Shotgun Justice
8. Custom Killing
9. Executioner's Song
10. Armed and Dangerous

Created by:

Madlax9999 | 29.07.2024

	1.	Razor - Armed And Dangerous 1984 - A bloody demo. This is how I can best describe this type of music on this EP. It is rather astounding how Razor came to record Evil Invaders after this spastic EP and its subsequent proper album. A quantum leap in terms of musical quality. This was Razor in its diaper phase. The band was not playing tight, the songwriting quality is nowhere to be found other than in maybe Take This Torch, the production is non-existent and the mixing is atrocious, the vocals are too loud and badly sung (Stace is nowhere near his performance on Evil Invaders and beyond). The guitars are heavily buried in the mix. Lyrically, this album offers some Spinal Tap moments. Unless you are some record collector, stay away from this mess. This album is legendary rare, with only 1000 copies or so being made available. 1000 too many if you ask me. 2/10
	2.	Razor - Executioner's Song 1985 - A somewhat better produced version of the spastic EP, only for some songs though, but the main issues remain. City of Damnation for example is back to Armed and Dangerous production level. Escape the Fire is the only song that hints towards the band's greatness. Stace sounds the way he would sing in Evil Invaders. This song is probably the band's first proper thrash song, albeit played in a sloppy manner and too primitive. If the band would ever consider re-recording this crap (which is highly unlikely considering the feud between Dave and Stace), the only songs that show some promise are Take This Torch, Escape the Fire and Gatecrasher. Gatecrasher could be somewhat elevated to Evil Invaders material if it were played in a tighter manner. 3/10
	3.	Razor - Evil Invaders 1985 - Their only classic album to date. Notice how the guitars sound is vastly improved from the weak previous records (as well as the subsequent ones). They sound like chainsaws. Stace's vocals here sound entirely different and they add much to the music. They are not one-dimensional like Tom Araya sounds in Slayer, adding nothing to the overall music atmosphere. This album also offers the best production quality out of all early Razor albums. While Executioner's Song and Malicious Intent sound castrated and weak, Evil Invaders has more power than 5 thrash albums combined. Especially 5 Razor albums combined. Nowhere Fast is easily top 10 thrash instrumental material. The opening riff is a killer. Cross Me Fool is another thrash classic on par with any Bay Area thrash giants. Not a single filler song in sight. The quality of the album is consistent from start to finish, which makes it a very entertaining and easy listening experience. Make sure you get a remastered CD as the original version has a muffled production. 10/10
	4.	Razor - Malicious Intent 1986 - And we are back to more mediocre sounding thrash albums. I need to stress a fact: for a thrash record to be good, it needs to be mixed and produced in an appropriate manner. While I am not suggesting the squeaky clean and overproduced sound of the modern era, nothing of that sort, I am certainly not referring to this type of sewer production. Thrash metal as a general rule is guitar dominated. The guitar riffs need to be at the forefront because those are the ones who set the mood and the melody of a song. If those are buried in the mix, while the vocals and other instruments (drums especially) are mixed loud, the result is this mess. As a result, this record lacks power. How did this mediocre production follow-up a greatly produced one is a mystery. Especially since the same producer that made Evil Invaders made this one as well. Did he change his drugs during this recording? Some songs could be given justice if they would be re-recorded with a proper sound, such as Rebel Onslaught, Grindstone or Stand Before Kings. Others not so much. 4/10
	5.	Razor - Custom Killing 1987 - This album should be renamed Customer Killing. According to Dave, this record was done in order to please the fame-hungry singer, Stace. Stace wanted more control over the songwriting process in Razor and the result is this abortion. Not only that it is badly produced, the songwriting is just atrocious. Survival of the Fittest is Razor attempting to be progressive. 11 minute length, over twice as long as any other song they recorded. Laughable. It is very hard to listen and properly assess this record though. The abhorrent production quality, the weak guitar sound and the overtly loud vocals makes for a very depressing listening experience. Unlike Malicious Intent, which has a few promising songs marred by a bad sound quality, this one has squat. Possibly the worst Razor record. 3/10
	6.	Razor - Violent Restitution 1988 - The final album with singer Stace. What was supposed to be a good exit, turned out to be a rather shameless exit. According to guitarist Dave Carlo, Stace had 0 contributions on this album, apart from singing and the lyrics for one song. His total disinterest for this album was expressed in live gigs, where he could not get the lyrics. To remedy this issue and avoid having Dave fire him live on stage, he came up with the brilliant idea of stamping out wallpapers with the lyrics on the entire stage, not willing to memorize them. The album is listenable and straightforward, but it has only 4 memorable tracks, the gargantuan instrumental track, the title track, Behind Bars and Hypertension. The rest are solid/average. The production is still muffled but better than on the previous 2 records. 8/10
	7.	Razor - Shotgun Justice 1990 - And we are back to albums with sewer production. Dave unironically claims this is his best album. He must have been on heavy crack when he made this statement. I repeat, thrash needs to sound a certain way to be good. While good songwriting is very important, all of that amounts to nothing if the production makes the guitar sound barely audible. This requires a re-recording for a proper song-by-song assessment. Some songs show a bit of promise, like The Pugilist or Stabbed in the Back. The rest are hard to tell because the production is just so bad. How can people hand over good ratings to this kind of badly produced album is just beyond me. 4/10
	8.	Razor - Open Hostility 1991 - If there is a word that best characterizes Razor's discography is schizophrenia. The album quality is like a coin flip, you just never know what side of the coin you get after you toss it. They have alternative between good and bad albums so much throughout their active recording phase that it is hard to divide their catalogue into good or bad eras. You never know what you get. They can spat a metal classic such as Evil Invaders, or a very good album like Violent Restitution, but at the same time mediocre stuff like Malicious Intent or downright garbage like Executioner's Song. Open Hostility is much like Violent Restitution, a very solid album with one great song, Free Lunch, a plethora of decent songs like Mental Torture, Psychopath or In Protest and some fillers scattered throughout. If Shotgun Justice had been recorded with this production, then that album might've turned out decently. This is the first album Dave Carlo decided to produce himself and he did a decent job. Straightforward textbook thrash, easy to listen despite having some fillers. 7/10
	9.	Razor - Decibels 1997 - Ignore the low rating for this album, which has nothing to do with the overall quality. If you have rated Malicious Intent, Shotgun Justice or even worse, Customer Killing higher than this album, then you're clearly tone-deaf. By far the best sounding Razor album up-to-date. The songwriting slips markedly after the 6th song, but up until then this album packs a heavy punch. Carlo again handled the production and it turned out even better than on Open Hostility, which already had a good production. The material on this album consists of songs written in 1992. 8/10
	10.	Razor - Cycle Of Contempt 2022 - At the time when this album was released, it has been exactly 30 years since Razor wrote any new songs. The songs of Decibels, despite the album being release in 1997, were all written in 1992. Admittedly, I wasn't expecting much 30 years after their last meaningful musical output, but if there was one thing I expected to stay the same or at least improve, was the production. Decibels had the best production quality of all Razor albums so it is rather puzzling how we got back to a weak sounding album, only slightly better than their 80s worst. Even more puzzling is why did Carlo set for this sound when he had so many years at his disposal to properly write and record this album. This is 2022. There are one-man music projects and bands with bedroom equipment who can provide better sounding music than this crap. Yet here we are. Then again Metallica also somehow manage to record crap albums with an inferior production quality than their 80s albums, despite the modern technology. Songwriting wise this is a decent album, in the Open Hostility vein. Four good tracks, Off My Meds being the highlight, followed by First-Rate Hate, the title track and A Bitter Pill. The rest is filler. 6/10