Welcome back to The Lazarus Pit, a look back at should-be classic records that don’t get nearly enough love. Today we’re looking at Toxik’s 1987 debut World Circus. And why are we looking at Toxik’s 1987 debut World Circus? Well, because it’s an excellent, underrated ’80s thrash album. But also because we recently celebrated 200 issues of our print magazine, and in that celebratory issue, longtime Decibel friend and contributor John Darnielle—who you also may know as the voice of The Mountain Goats—said that there should be a 10-page retrospective feature about World Circus in those very pages. Well, we couldn’t do that, but we can do this. So let’s do this.
What I love about this record is its pure ambition, its urge to go faster and more manic, the spirit of hyperbolic ’80s thrash that it so wonderfully embodies, warts and all. I mean, this is “turn it down a bit if any family members come in the room” kinda stuff, but in the same way that, say, Watchtower is: not because you’re embarrassed but because you don’t want to, for the millionth time in your life, try to defend and explain why this is the greatest music of all time. You, Decibel readers, do not need this explained to you. You just need someone who understands. We understand.
Opener “Heart Attack” is absurd, like Nitro gone thrash, Raven heavied up, all the good things made even better for a few glorious, time-suspending minutes (lyric sheet just says “You figure it out” for the lyrics, so that should give you an idea of where we’re at). “Social Overload” is an awesome title and Anthraxian thrash done right. I’m pretty sure “Pain and Misery” is Pantera’s “Domination” three years before it was released. “Voices” is thrash hell, and the next track, “Door to Hell,” is thrash heaven. The title track with the circus riff, well, take that, Dillinger Escape Plan! We all pleasured ourselves over that when DEP did it, forgetting that Toxik did it an easy decade before.
But I’m realistic: I do realize that, sure, this album is firmly second-tier thrash, doomed to be forgotten, no amount of smart, cold hard steel riffs clashing against histrionic shrieking vocals preventing this one from dollar-bin status decades later (or, fine, months after it came out), but, damn, man, there’s a reason this record was referenced in our anniversary issue, and it wasn’t wink-wink-nudge-nudge insider baseball, and it wasn’t the warm glow of nostalgia making the second tier a bit better than it really was. It’s because, sometimes, second-tier thrash from 1987 is the greatest music in the world. And, you know, maybe I won’t turn it down a bit when family members come in the room now after all. Maybe I’ll just turn it up, up, keep turning it up, up, drowning out the sounds of a world that was never ready for this stuff, volume getting louder and louder, forever and ever, amen.
