«Release from Agony» is Destruction’s third album, and it arrived on 1 December 1987 through Steamhammer/SPV in Europe, reaching North America in 1988. It is also the first record the band made as a four-piece, with Marcel «Schmier» Schirmer on vocals and bass, Mike Sifringer and Harry Wilkens on guitars and Oliver «Olli» Kaiser behind the drums.
“`Country: Germany
Genre: Thrash Metal
For fans of: Kreator, Sodom, Slayer
Compared with what came before it, the album is a more technical affair: fast riffs, abrupt shifts and passages that already reach towards a more extreme sound. Schmier’s voice carries a rasp that suits the record’s dark tone, while the production keeps everything clean and loud. Destruction come from Lörrach in Germany and, together with Kreator and Sodom, form the core of German thrash. Schmier’s bass drives the songs and gives the mix a lot of weight.
The standouts are «Beyond Eternity», the title track «Release from Agony» and «Sign of Fear», with «Incriminated» as the heaviest moment. «Our Oppression», «Dissatisfied Existence» and «Survive to Die» supply the darker passages. Joachim Luetke’s cover shows a figure in a straitjacket, eyes set in its palms and a mouth full of teeth.
Kalle Trapp produced, giving the record a great deal of clarity and punch. It was the last Destruction album with Schmier for many years: he left afterwards and only returned in 1999. The record landed during a boom for German thrash and is still counted among the old school thrash albums that laid the foundations of the genre, sitting alongside the era’s best and played by fans to this day.
See also: Critical Defiance – Rivers of Blood and Tankard – Chemical Invasion.
