Demolition Hammer – Tortured Existence

New York City’s Demolition Hammer arrived on the East Coast thrash metal scene circa 1986; soon after, their first demo tape, Skull Fracturing Nightmare, began making the rounds of indie record labels and tape-trading fans alike. A second demo, entitled Necrology, arrived two years later and proved good enough to secure the group — comprised of vocalist/bassist Steve Reynolds, guitarists James Reilly and Derek Sykes, and drummer Vinny Daze — a recording contract with Century Media Records. There followed a pair of perfectly competent thrash albums in 1990’s Tortured Existence and 1992’s Epidemic of Violence, but the style was already on the outs by that time, so Demolition Hammer experimented with a more current, Pantera-like death metal attack on 1994’s Time Bomb. The latter also saw them reduced to a trio, following the departure of Reilly and Daze and the arrival of former Malevolent Creation drummer Alex Marquez — but all of the changes were ultimately for naught, as the group wound up breaking up a year later when Reynolds and Marquez were offered new gigs with Florida’s Solstice.