Whiplash - Ticket To Mayhem (1987)

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Whiplash - Ticket To Mayhem (1987)

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With their debut Power and Pain Whiplash had clearly set themselves apart from the thrash norm. As many fans acknowledge, Whiplash are usually pretty infamous for their screamingly high pitched guitar riffs and rhythm's that ended up sounding pretty damn cool and original, compared to what everyone else was doing at the time. Is that still the case with this follow up release? Well, somewhat but I believe if you took both Power and Pain and their 1990 release Insult to Injury then smashed them together, you'd end up with Ticket to Mayhem. Vocalist and guitarist Tony Portaro is back along with Tony Bono on bass guitars, with the exception of Joe Cangelosi replacing the other Tony on drums (always loved the Tony lineup). You probably won't notice much of a difference in the drums as Cangelosi does a fantastic job creating intense beats while bursting into pure speed fairly often. Portaro and Bono again handle their instruments incredibly well. However, this is probably when Portaro was starting to think about including a real vocalist into the band (which would happen with Insult to Injury). He's still a rough thrash growler, though there are a few tracks where it seems like he really wanted to sing and I can't help but notice it sounds pretty odd and almost out of place. It's not something I'm going to pick apart because it doesn't bring the album down or anything, but I prefer when he just screams his lungs out. Which is luckily still the case for the majority of the album here. The production is simply put, grade A work. That kind of brings me to my other point though, as I've setup in the first paragraph. This album is truly all over the place. It's really hard to explain my thoughts on this because while one could probably say the album is inconsistent, as diverse as it is the quality is still pretty much there and most of the songs are great. You've got a handful of tracks that sound like something straight from their debut Power and Pain, like Walk This Plank, The Burning Of Atlanta, Snake Pit, and Respect The Death. These are the tracks with rapid firing razor sharp riffs that scream "Whiplash", totally insane and relentless numbers. The other half of the album is made up of material you could expect to hear on Insult To Injury. The speed is replaced with a little more heaviness, Portaro attempts to sing a little more, and overall the songs come off as a little more laid back than what Whiplash is known for. While I can honestly admit if this entire album were made up of debut-esque tracks, I'd probably rank it even hier than Power And Pain, but that's not the case with the other tracks. As for the intro and outro (which are essentially the same thing), they are pretty cool loaded with sounds of warfare and whatnot pumping you up for what to expect here, but are a bit too long for their own good. Maybe I'm just being slightly cynical here and wanted this to be Power and Pain II perhaps? All in all I do have to again stress that the quality is still there with the majority of the album, I'd also like to state that I do firmly believe Insult To Injury is an awesome release. If you've somehow missed out on Whiplash all this time you really are missing out on a masterful thrash act, I might recommend checking out their debut first though. If you've heard that and their other releases and still haven't heard this one, what are you waiting for! Just expect a little bit of experimentation with this one.

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