Matricide was a death/thrash band from Florida that was formed in 1987 by John Ortega, who was also playing bass for Morbid Angel around the same time. He released only two demos before he ended the project. I only managed to find their first demo, Mother's Day.
The production is rather decent. The instruments stand out quite well and nothing sounds horribly muffled, as was the case with most other death metal demos during that time. Since this was a one-man band, John Ortega used a drum machine, but it's programmed really well. They perform some great blast beats, the cymbal crashes are really prominent, and although they're programmed, the drums sound quite real.
The guitars are the real stars of this album. They play a lot of fast shredding riffs that straddle the line between thrash metal and death metal, but what really steals the show are the plethora of solos that John Ortega threw in. I don't kid around when I say that he plays a shitload of solos. They scream and howl their way throughout the entire demo. Some sound like Slayer while others sound like Death. It's an amazing experience. They also play some wah-wah. I don't like that, but all the other solos are still awesome.
The only part that failed to live up to expectations were the vocals. I have the feeling that John Ortega was unable to perform a proper growl, so he decided to perform a regular thrash metal singing voice and then add a demonic audio filter to that. They sound incredibly cheesy and horribly out of place. It would have been better if he had either hired a session vocalist or just leave the demo as an instrumental performance. Other than that, this demo is awesome. The drum machine sounds quite real and the guitars are just plain amazing.
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