Metal Underground.com

Only in metal can an artist name a band after himself, then proceed to bare-chestedly proclaim his love of drinking and smoking while writing "alcoholic thrash metal" - and isn't that why we all love the metal genre at heart? Damn right. In the words of the man himself, "I'm just a fucking guitar man with my songs."

Order of the day for H-George is thrash metal. This demo called "Neurotic" has no early crossover influence but a heavy feel of the speed metal classics like "Rust In Peace." In fact, Megadeth seems like the big bulls-eye target that H-George is aiming at with this demo. This especially shows through on a track like "Enemy" and is actually a pretty good tactic as, well, Megadeth are awesome.

All the songs here also exhibit some technical tendencies also reminiscent of Annihilator, and in a weird turn of fate Jeff Waters appears to be mixing and mastering H-George's forthcoming debut. The vocals are not the strongest point but provide a harsh proto-death style, which unsurprisingly for an Italian band sort of reminded me of Gory Blister's vocals.

One of the highlights of this demo is the unquestioning loyalty to thrash metal without much need to revert to the sound of the over-saturated late 80s thrash scene. However, there's a pretty crucial point that stops me raving about this demo, and it's that the songs still need a lot of development - specifically in the repetition and lack of riffs. One of the best things about albums like "Rust In Peace" and "Never, Neverland" was the pure amount of riffs thrown at you from all angles at all times. Despite H-George's guitar prowess, "Neurotic" lacks the song writing complexity of these classics the tendency is for choruses to appear as just another repeated riff in a song. Hopefully this can be remedied and H-George takes a page out of the Mustaine big book of hook writing. On the plus side, all the riffs that do appear on the demo are great.

The demo tracks are available to listen to on H-George's Myspace and look out for H-George alcoholising his way into a full length some time soon.