This album, originally released in 1994 and here reissued on limited-edition vinyl by Prosthetic Records, is a stunning glimpse of a band at the height of their powers. It was the first time that Pepper Keenan sung on a whole COC album and it also signified a huge sonic change for the once-hardcore band, who then switched to a very odd and unique metallic hardcore for one album before this, then... this. The first three songs are pure simplistic metal perfection, the glory of Accept (that balls-to-the-wall drum intro to "Albatross" ain't no coincidence) filtered through the power of the good parts of Black Album Metallica, with a whole lot of southern grooving tossed in to the mix. "Clean My Wounds" is as perfect a song as I've ever heard in my entire life, and then "Without Wings", perfectly placed as track four, gives the listener a chance to reflect on what just happened with that outrageously good opening trio of tunes.

From there it gets heavy and sludgey ("Broken Man"), groovy ("Senor Limpio"), hardcore-meets-'77-KISS ("My Grain")... but there's a coherence to it all, a ridiculous chemistry flowing through the members and into the earholes of all who are lucky enough to spend time with this glorious beast of an album. It just goes on and on, the almost-pushing-it run time giving Deliverance a bit of an epic feel, giving the idea that something huge just happened when the dust settles. And it sure as hell did: it was songs like the gorgeous rocker "Seven Days", the powerful acoustic "Shelter" (one of Keenan's best vocal performances to date), and the looming '90s quirk of closer "Pearls Before Swine". It was the fact that this album, originally released on Columbia Records (!), not getting absolutely huge was one of the hugest mistakes in the past 25 years of music history. The sounds on Deliverance are the sounds of pure victory, the chords and crashing and bashing that make metal great, the feeling deep in the guts of those receiving these sonic offerings. It reminds the listener that even with all the losing we constantly face through the years, we're still on top, man, and it's because of the almighty riff, which this album dishes out again and again and again, Keenan's excellent, soulful vocals and a killer rhythm section all adding up to an album that is just perfect. No bonus tracks here; none needed.