You’ll see smoke and fire long before you ever see blood on the raceway, when they’re waving the yellow flag and if there’s gore to see it’ll be flaming dismemberment and incinerated bones in most cases. Surrounded by shrapnel and howling for blood our reaping crew in the now scorched pit is Linz, Austria-based black/speed metal quartet DEATH RACER who insist you look to the competitive world of speed demons and rally cars for this inspired, largely classicist debut full-length album. Appreciably morbid, echoing in daemonic hiss and thrashing like a strapped-in stock car racer on fire ‘From Gravel to Grave‘ is mostly just good fun in intent but that doesn’t stop it from being a heavy, menacingly delivered ‘evil’ speed metal album in the style of the mid-to-late 80’s.

Death Racer formed at some point prior to 2020 and as is the case with some of the less forthcoming, mainly nostalgic ‘old school’ inspired acts of today they’ve no major interest in appearing as a serious-faced group of folks willing to explain their process beyond the most obvious inspiration available. They’re basically the type of band, as far as I can tell, that’re out to drink beer and play themed maniac speed metal for the hell of it. Their first demo tape (‘Qualifying‘, 2020) suggested their path converged in admiration for speed metal in the Venom inspired vein past-and-present wherein the raw, ugly tone of their music resembles middle-European ‘evil’ but also incurs a hardcore punk influence (“Inverted Crossroads”) by way of transference and simple modus. This means a fan of the more eccentric aggression of earlier Razor or Exciter who might dig beyond that point toward the snarl of records like ‘Obsessed by Cruelty‘ and deep enough into the realm to appreciate (earlier) Kat might enjoy the burnt-to-a-crisp attack of this record and its bashed-at, menace. Their demo tape was raw and so is this album to some degree but they’ve stepped up the psycho vocalizations a bit, hit upon a broader variety of riffs and generally made noise worth rendering decent enough to suit a first LP.

In terms of any stylistic change occurring in the interim I’d go a step further and compare parts of ‘From Gravel to Grave‘ to Bulldozer‘s ‘The Day of Wrath‘ and although few of these songs are as raw and ragged as Flames ‘Made in Hell‘ but I think folks who enjoy those records will understand the similar ratio of rawness, punkish do-it-yourself movement, and a clear point of inspiration taken from circa ’83 heavy metal. It may just as well suffice to point to I dunno, Division Speed or Deathhammer for today’s discerning black-thrasher palate for a vague reference for attitude and classicism inherent but this album is only one part ‘Infernal Overkill‘ (see: “Nordschleife”). Anyhow, this won’t be a long and involved scrape of the barrel here as the main pique of entertainment for this kind of record is the punkish, howling attitude it brings, the places it goes with it and the (actually) not-so stupid theme of this album.

If there is “fun” to be had from a throwback speed metal record with a first wave black metal rub to it… about racing, death on the tracks… it is, in my case, all about the great records that it reminds me of. I could basically hang with an album like ‘From Gravel to Grave‘ for hours and keep opening tabs for twenty or so other records and eventually make a day or two of it. In fact that’d been part of the review process, appreciating the nostalgic value of raw European speed metal with a blackened touch, and admiring that an undertaking as simple as this can successfully invoke that auld rotten niche but still do something else with it; They’ve got it down in this regard where the echoing screech-and-snarl of the bassist/vocalist (B. from Kringa and Hagzissa) to the rattlesnake shaken guitar tone (via S.B. ex-Chainbreäker) to the point that the first impression is all throwback and by the tenth listen you’ll have gotten a sense for just how far they’ve gone with their own exaggeration of classic form and function. The riff and rhythm of it all is strictly set in stone per the olden days but the black metal perspective here is maybe more extreme than you’ll realize on the first pass through.

Can I still enjoy a decent enough kinda gimmicked speed metal record? Yeah, of course. But largely for the sake of an authentic mid-80’s sound and an over the top echoing screech applied. Otherwise the theme is keen enough in the sense that the artist has taken an idea with a long-standing visual history related to speed, danger and thrills then ramped it to its logical conclusion: Violent, messy and very public scenes of death. The thought of a fiery end and the thrill of the chance any driver takes might be taken different these days as life becomes increasingly cheap but in the retro 80’s sense they were heroic thrill jockeys, madmen with skill rather than tragic dipshits. Anyhow, there is something akin to a metal warrior power fantasy here and it works well enough. I could do without the samples set throughout the tracklist and the riffcraft doesn’t develop all that much of a knack of its own as they work by the numbers but I’d yet been entertained every time I picked this album up. A moderately high recommendation.

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