I've never been a fan of "Christian" metal, especially within the more extreme realms of the underground, and because of this, I never really gave early 90s thrashers Believer a chance up until recently. It wasn't until I read about them in Jeff Wagner's book Mean Deviation that I became interested in checking them out. Wagner's description of the band's music, their technical offbeat thrash, and the more cerebral approach to matters of faith and theology made me curious to investigate further, leading me to a pair of reissues that came out on the Polish label Metal Mind Productions. Formed in Pennsylvania in the mid 80s, Believer started off as a relatively straightforward thrash act, but by the time of their second album Sanity Obscure, they had evolved into a complex, adventurous fusion of thrash, prog, and neo-classical influences. The band's Christian perspective was what most people knew them for, a novely within the burgeoning extreme metal scene at that time, but even this aspect of their music stood apart from other bands with a similar background with a more intellectual investigation of "white" religion and Christ-based theology than, say, the cheesy glam of Stryper or the terminally lame Barren Cross.

By the time that 1993's Dimensions came out, Believer were one of underground metal's most advanced thrash acts. Still tagged as "that Christian band", that perspective (which was more subtle than you mighrt expect) overshadowed their precision playing and complex, offbeat songwriting, and their third album was their most ambitious yet, with virtuoso drumming, singer Kurt Bachman's vocals sounding more putrid than ever, the increased use of electronic effects, and a conceptual approach that has the lyrics and subject matter drawing from Ludwig Feuerbach's religious critique The Essence of Christianity, quotations from Biblical scripture, the writings of Freud, Sartre's Being And Nothingness, and radical theologist Thomas J. J. Altizer on the nature of religion and God. Presented here by Metal Mind in a new re-mastered edition with new liner notes in a machine-numbered digipack, Dimensions heads even further into prog , and incorporates some subtle industrial elements in their abstract intros. The crushing opener "Gone" lays down some massive chunky riffage and tricky time changes, and weird bleeping computer noises, orchestral hits and voice loops introduce "Future Mind"; when the thrash kicks in, it's angular, mathy, complex , seriously heavy and cerebral at the same time, fast paced galloping thrash warping into difficult off-time riffing and killer convoluted drum patterns, and ends with a pulsating Moroder-like synth throb, soundtracky ambience, which reappears later as a recurrent motif throughout the album. "Dimentia" features eerie atonal melodies on acoustic guitars and some spoken word vocals before it kicks into slower jagged heaviness,

but then when the cello and soaring guitar leads come in, it becomes this gorgeous, haunting classical-tinged metal. More strange electronic noise and effects begin "What Is But Cannot Be" before unleashing another contortionist thrash fraught with sudden detours into fusion riffing.

Then begins the "Trilogy Of Knowledge", the album's ambitious twenty-minute, four part prog metal suite concerned with the ascent of man and his subsequent fall from grace described in the book of Genesis. It starts with a short intro track of sound effects and spoken word narration, scraping industrial noise, looped strings and massive earthshaking sheet-metal pummel, and then "Movement I: The Lie" kicks in with sinister violins and other strings, backed by the choppy, angular thrash metal, a kind of orchestral thrash that's heavy and atmospheric, with some wailing electric violin leads through the song. It takes a few minutes before the vocals come in, and when they do, it's a mix of operatic female singing trading off with the snarling male screams, the music shifting from aggressive complex thrash to a soaring melodic passage to instrumental complexity. The strings and bass take over as it moves into "Movement II: The Truth"; at first it's total chamber rock with beautiful melancholy strings , but then kicks into the chugging lockstep symphonic thrash again, getting weirder as the band goes through a constant series of tempo and time signature changes, crunchy syncopated riffing playing in counterpoint to the strings and female vocals. By the time you get to the dissonant strings and female singing that begins the final "Movement III: The Key", it's starting to resemble the eerie chamber prog of bands like Univers Zero and Present, before launching into one final assault of intricate thrash.

Along with Watchtower, these guys were responsible for some of the most confounding, brain-scrambling thrash metal I've heard.