OUTRAGE (EP)

This is the debut EP, released in 1987 on the band's own label, Pile Driver Records, by a group formed in Nagoya in 1982. The catalogue number is PD-001. The original was an LP; Warner Music Japan later put it on CD as WPCR-12654. The design of its sleeve earned it the nickname Peke Rage. Thrash metal was gathering force in Japan at the time and a number of fine bands were competing, and this EP is remembered as an answer sent to Metallica from Nagoya. Not an imitation: the band had their roots in the New Wave of British Heavy Metal, in the hard rock and heavy metal of the seventies and early eighties, and in punk and hardcore, and the record is what came of that. Four songs: Under Control Of Law, Death Trap, Edge Of Death and Step On It. The guitar solo in the last of them is built with a maturity difficult to credit to a teenager. And at a time when shouting was taken for granted in thrash, Naoki Hashimoto's voice - rough but carrying a melody squarely - caught the ear. The EP sold out quickly and was long unobtainable, until its four songs were put on CD as the second disc of It's Packed!! in 1997. The running order here is as printed on release.