POWER FROM CHOCK

Let's head back to the comics department! Have you ever heard of a band called Onslaught and their cult record "Power from Hell"!? Yes you have! Or damn should!!

Apart from being an early thrash/death effort in the same vain as many other angry teens at the same time, Onslaught did something in the year of '85 only one other band did that year. They named a song "Death Metal". Who was the other band? Possessed of course! Funny thing though. Possessed has been, by many people, referred to as the first Death Metal band mostly for one reason only; they did a song called "Death Metal". Like with Venom's '82 gem "Black Metal". If it says "***** Metal" then it is "***** Metal"! Right? But the thing is "Seven Churches" was released in October '85 whilst "Power from Hell" was released in February '85 with a back cover that did not only have the mentioned song in the track list but also stated in big letters "Death Metal" and also sorted up the A side and B side by calling them "Death Side" and "Metal Side". What? So wait! Was Onslaught the first Death Metal band? No, probably not, but I wanted to state the obvious and now we are side-tracked because this is an completely different topic which will in the end as always be somewhat pointless.

And for the sake of it we should also name drop Vulcano and remember that they did a track called "Death Metal" too, but in '86, one year before their country men in Cova did the same on a demo. 

The album art for "Power from Hell" is one of those I would think to be original, but really shouldn't because they seldomly are.

 

As you can see it has some finesse to it. The axe carrying demon of the original has on Onslaughts cover a cozy little cloud of smoke emerging from the pentagram below. My example to the far right is from a Swedish horror magazine which published foreign comics. The one in the middle is the original which was probably featured in one of the comics which CHOCK re-published for us in the country of Bathory cavaliers.

...should also be mentioned that Suffocation used the whole image in 1990 for their first demotape.