Most anything Sadus’ bassist Steve DiGiorgio touches tends to get noticed solely for his attendance (Death “Individual Thought Patterns” and Testament “The Gathering” generally hold much of the fan spotlight.) In fact his unique fretless bass playing is typically the focal point of the majority of Sadus album reviews and hype. To be fair, his bass lines did in fact enhance “Swallowed in Black” and “A Vision of Misery” but the guy is a nothing more than a glorified session musician with a cool sound (outside of his core Sadus releases.) “Elements of Anger” is in fact a Sadus core release and his playing here is pretty standard for late 90’s DiGiorgio, plenty of bonky flourishes and atmosphere building tone. I’m not a fan, he is always filler and never a ‘hook’ in any song.
In my opinion Darren Travis has always been more important than DiGiorgio. His style of guitar riffs and vocals are what made the first three Sadus albums interesting, exciting and energetic. While he still has some interesting ideas to toss out on this album his rhythm guitar performance does flop around in mid-paced hard rock/groove metal territory too often. This is not, however, a grunty Pantera imitation nor is it an awkward, angsty, doofus-assed chest pound like their decade later follow-up “Out For Blood”.
Straddling the fence between cerebral prog-metal and laid back half-thrash “Elements of Anger” turns out to be an easy listen with some memorable moments here and there. If you like any of the albums or bands I’ve mentioned in this review, I believe this album is worth a full listen. If you are a huge fan of thrash or death metal and want to see what happened between “Swallowed in Black” and the disappointing “Out For Blood” you should probably find something better to do with your time as “Elements of Anger” will not be what you’re looking for.
