Depressive Age - First Depression (1992)

What a cracker this is. I'm a huge fan of highly technical thrash - Watchtower, Blind Illusion, Coroner, Mekong Delta, and Depressive Age are certainly part of that bewildering clan. This is not headbanging music unless you want to jarr your neck and end up in hospital! Depressive Age are a fantastic German band led by the extraordinary vocal talents of Jan Lubitzki whose clear vocals may seem a litle unfitting at first amidst the crunching, albeit jagged guitars, epileptic drums and bubbling bass tumbles. Lubitzki has a distinct style, crystal clear yet darkly Gothic, but it's the music that really dazzles the senses. At times Depressive Age are completely inaccessible, their remote sound drifting on alternating waves that never once marry with one another - again, think Watchtower for such apparent awkwardness and distant ventures. There's nothing cosmic about it, or depressing, in fact Depressive Age, despite their name and intent, are fascinating, but only if techno metal is your thing. To some the icy yet bone shudderingly heavy 'The Light' or the complex 'Innocent In Detention' may prove to be all too thorny as they cavort, leap, gallop, dive and then soar at alarming rate without ever once giving notice to do so. The superb 'Autumn Times' is majestic but all too inhospitable in the way it toys with the listener before providing an inescapable tangled web. You only have to read my reviews of Watchtower and the like to see what you're getting yourself into here, but for me this is akin to classical music, moving, Gothic, and multi-layered, but a few spins will not be enough before one is privileged to enter the next door into an even bigger maze of intricacy. 8/10