Now there's a label alliance I can get behind, although one wonders what the mean common ground between those two organizations looks like, and, apparently, it's this reissue of tech thrashers Aftermath's Eyes Of Tomorrow album. This Chicago-based band released this, their only full-length, back in 1994 (in 1996 they changed their name to the horrible Mother God Moviestar) on Zoid Records, and it went about as far as a weirdo tech-thrash album could have in 1994 on Zoid Records, although if you try long and hard enough, you might recognize the original cover art. 

Right off the bat, this one is daunting with its 82-minute run time and unloveable production, vocals drenched in reverb, lessening whatever impact they may have had to begin with. But the tunes ain't half bad, definitely half good if you're into far-reaching progressive thrash; six-minute opener “Words That Echo Fear” travels a ton of ground even just four minutes in. The feeling of second-tier is all over this, but second tier to bands like Watchtower and Anacrusis sounds pretty good sometimes, given the nice wallop of nostalgia this one carries in its stiff production sound and generally lost-in-the-mid-'90s delivery. By the time the bonus stuff ends, I never want to sit through this again, of course, but when I do and am face to face with a song at a time, like the frantic title track, for example, I gotta give it one twisted, gnarled thumb up (“Being”'s misplaced funk metal, on the other hand, sounds just as absurd now as it did then).