The 1988 album Deception Ignored was an entirely unexpected follow-up to the band's prior two albums of aggressive (if fairly by-the-numbers) Teutonic thrash. While Deathrow's earlier works were firmly in the Kreator / Sodom mode of tightly wound Germanic thrash metal, their third full-length saw the addition of new guitarist Uwe Osterlehner, and with him a newfound complexity and progginess that saw them joining the ranks, albeit briefly, of such legendary bands as Coroner, Voivod and Watchtower. Like that killer Midas Touch double disc reissue that's also listed in this week's new arrivals list, Deathrow's Deception Ignored is another criminally overlooked slab of prog-thrash that had originally been released on Noise Records, and in this case is actually one of the best album's of its kind from the era - Watchtower fans in particular will want to hear the insane left-field riffing, weird jazzy chords and whiplash-inducing time signature shifts, and Osterlehner's guitar skills are seriously impressive. Like Watchtower, Deathrow were now delivering extremely angular and unpredictable thrash songs that were filled with eerie soaring leads, jagged, whacked-out riffs, jazzy fills and flourishes, and constantly changing time signature changes, while maintaining high quality riffs with plenty of heaviness and a persistent ominous vibe, even when they suddenly wheel out a piano and pipe organ at the beginning of "Triocton" for a few minutes of moody melody. Then there's the nearly ten-minute "Narcotic", an awesome, mind-melting shredfest that fuses Osterlehner crazed, mathy staccato riffing with the album's most ferocious circle-pit anthem.

This was Deathrow's one and only foray into complex, prog-influenced thrash; after this, they would return to a more conventional sound on their final album Life Beyond, as the other members were less interested in playing this sort of challenging, Watchtower-esque math-thrash. It's a damn shame, as Deathrow produced a minor classic of progressive thrash metal with Deception Ignored, and it's by far my favorite of all of their albums. Essential for anyone into the experimental, prog-influenced end of the 80's thrash underground (Anacrusis, DBC, Watchtower, Voivod, Coroner, Toxik, etc.), Deception Ignored is at long last back in print thanks to the killer reissue label Divebomb, with a new re-mastering and extensive liner notes from esteemed metal writer and Mean Deviation author Jeff Wagner.