32 Mildreds was a thrash metal band from the go-nowhere town of Bowie, Maryland that had the misfortune of releasing their only demo shortly after the thrash metal bubble of the 80s collapsed. Their music also had the misfortune of sounding like a bunch of rejected ideas from a bunch of other, more successful thrash metal bands.
These guys aren't terrible musicians, they're just terrible songwriters. The drums play some pretty good beats with a few fills thrown in for good measure, the bass is quite prominent in the mix despite this being a demo, and the guitars manage to play a few good licks, especially on the song “Girls (For Jerry)”, but the songwriting manages to be boring, unoriginal, and nonsensical all at the same time. Allow me to give a few examples. The opening riff on “Rude Awakening” is an obvious ripoff of Anthrax. On the stupidly named “Grandma On A Comeback”, they play some bland riffs before transitioning to this strange drum and bass break that just comes out of nowhere. If you hate random moments like that, rest assured that there are plenty of moments on this demo where the drums and bass just play on their own. There's no rhyme or reason to any of it. They probably just thought to themselves, “Well, a whole bunch of other thrash metal bands include slow parts featuring standalone bass and drums on their albums, so we'll put lots of those moments on our album!” They just throw those elements in there without understanding why they were put in there.
Even if they had good songwriting, the vocals would still be the weakest link of the band's performance. I take it he tried to sound like Dave Mustaine, but instead he sounds like a nerdy kid trying to sound like Dave Mustaine. His performance is just awkward and annoying, especially during those moments when he tries to sing fast. It sounds like his tongue is just uselessly flapping around in his mouth as he spews out random syllables.
Overall, 32 Mildreds may know how to play their instruments, but they can't write a song to save their lives. Oh, I also forgot to mention that this demo also features a song called “Thrash Song” which features the most boring and generic thrash I've ever heard. I'm pretty sure they weren't even trying on that one. I'm glad this was the only demo they release, otherwise we would have been subject to even more boring and poorly-conceived thrash metal.
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