NUCLEAR ASSAULT — Handle With Care

NUCLEAR ASSAULT

Handle With Care (1988)

Label: Lonely Planet/Fono
★★★½ 7/10
By Fawkes

Holy moly, a vintage thrash spinning-grinding machine!!! Semi-garage sound, methodical annihilation of everything in sight, hundred-proof bravado, thunderous mega-brutal infantilism... You'd be hard-pressed to find better words to describe "Handle With Care." The title says: "Handle With Care!" Ha, just try handling these guys!!! They'll punch your ticket, riddle you with holes, and devour you themselves. Waves of Head & Shoulders-commercial hair stare at us with the innocent beady eyes of teenagers, while proto-death guitars roar in your ears alongside proto-black blast beats and plenty of other proto-something-or-other... That said, variety is by no means the album's strong suit. Then again, NUCLEAR ASSAULT weren't the only ones guilty of that back in the day, heh... "Handle With Care" is a product of thrash's golden era. And the quality matches accordingly...