Bulldozer - The Day Of Wrath Review

It’s not always a bad thing to be compared to a band as significant to metal as England’s Venom was. As sloppy and incoherent as they were in their prime, Venom was writing music that very few bands were even courageous enough to partake in during the early ‘80s. Once they went into a nosedive with 1985’s Possessed, there had to be somebody to take their seedy place. For a few years, that band was Bulldozer, and the proof of that was in their debut album, 1985's The Day Of Wrath.

Whether it was intentional or not, The Day Of Wrath is tied to Venom like a Siamese twin. It’s always unfair to just throw a popular band out as a way to describe another band, but there really is no other way to articulate how Bulldozer comes across on this record. From the galloping riffs on “Mad Man” to the Cronos-esque shrieks bassist/vocalist A.C. Wild deals out, The Day Of Wrath has little bits and pieces of past Venom releases woven into its very foundation.

So what makes The Day Of Wrath worthy of its place in this column, other than trying to be the next Venom? It’s all about the noise; static, buzzing gold to the metalhead who can’t lose their hearing soon enough. Venom is a jumbled mess all their own, but Bulldozer outdoes them in all fields of dissonance. The guitars sound like metal equipment being smashed against each other, and there’s piercing feedback that resonates whenever a solo pops up (which is very often).

This noise is so overwhelming that many listener will give a shout of frustration and hit the delete button. With the poor production and lack of anything resembling melody or rhythmic timing, The Day Of Wrath’s simpleness will turn off a modern listener used to pristine, Pro Tools-assisted recordings. However, it’s admirable to hear a band that doesn’t let something like production or talent get in the way of a metal-injected whiplash.

The Day Of Wrath has all the qualities of a first record, including undercooked song ideas (six-minute closing instrumental “Endless Funeral”) and a tendency to end every song with an extended outro, where the band just goes crazy on their respective instruments. There are some great moments throughout though, like the awesome minute-long drum intro to “Whisky Time” and the vicious pace of “Cut-Throat” and “Fallen Angel.” Bulldozer even manages to sound coherent for more than 30 seconds on the doomy “Welcome Death.”

Bulldozer would crash-land in the late ‘80s, breaking up after the well-received Neurodeliri. Their story does not end on this sad note, as they reunited around 2008 to wreck the necks of a new generation. The band came a long way from being second-rate Venom knockoffs, though The Day Of Wrath picks up extra points for being a sonic deviant. For picking up where Venom left off with Welcome To Hell, The Day Of Wrath gets the nod for this week’s Retro Recommendation.