TOXIFIX, Rise from the Ashes (2011, Gravedigger)

The skull:
I suppose the ashes from which this skull has arisen are the ones in the hospital incinerator. Fortunately he’s still labeled as a biohazard (that fireproof paint was a smart investment), so if you see him, steer clear. He might have hepatitis C or meningitis or something. Prevention is the best medicine.

The music:
Rise from the Ashes is a bedroom demo of slightly blackend thrash metal. It’s mostly okay, I guess. When the band sticks to the thrash, it’s completely generic and utterly forgettable, but when they mix in more modern black and death metal sounds, as on “Gravedigger,” they start to approach something interesting. The vocals, however, are shit throughout, a sort of black metal frog croak run through pretty much every effect you can imagine. As is basically always the case when the vocals are this awful, they come courtesy of the main songwriter (usually the guitarist), whose ego is clearly too bloated to admit that he cannot do it all. So yeah, with a little musical polish, a better studio, and basically any other singer they could find, Toxifix could probably have grown into something interesting, but they broke up in 2013, so this is it, and it’s not much.
— Friar Johnsen