Konkhra

Konkhra - The Vicious Circle
Self-Released, 1990
Genre: Death/Thrash Metal

1. Web of Nemesis
2. The Vicious Circle
3. Hunger
4. Living Savages

As much as I wish I had a copy of the Konkhra demos, I just don't. Instead I got the recordings from the special edition of "Nothing is Sacred". I first came across Konkhra with the release of "Spit or Swallow," but I always found their material notoriously hard to find in the U.S. Only after the internet existed did I start having a much wider range easily available to me! So I've been tracking down the other Konkhra releases and I was pleased to see the special edition had their demo material for re-release.

Back in the '90s Konkhra played some form of Death/Thrash, which was pretty typical for Death Metal bands around this time. As I've said in my other reviews, the Death Metal bands were still trying to transition out of the Thrash genre, which was quite a difficult task for many bands. Growing up and listening to all this great Thrash is naturally going to affect the way you compose music and Konkhra is no exception. The thing I like about hearing Konkhra at these early stages is their Thrash influence is a lot more broad compared to the American Death Metal bands. Being from Denmark we hear a lot more of that furious German Thrash sound that was so well known in this area. Even though this feels quite similar to a lot of the earlier Death Metal in America, it still has that touch of the more European sound that Thrash had. I'm actually a little surprised there wasn't much Swedish influence from the Death Metal bands like Edge of Sanity, Nihilist, Grave, and Dismember. I think the Swedish approach was much heavier than the American Death Metal bands, as far as guitar tone is concerned at least, but Konkhra favor a bit thinner guitar tone which is similar to the Thrash Metal bands of the 80's.

Maybe someday I will be lucky enough to own this piece of history. It's good as far as demo material goes, and was probably quite lauded in Denmark. For some reason I don't hear a lot of music come out of Denmark, but I believe Konkhra would be one of the premier Death Metal projects in that area.