New York City's
Toxik were a "band" in name only, since it was really guitar-masturbating wünderkind
Josh Christian composing most all of their songs and the endless flurry of bumblebee notes scattered all over their breathless 1988 debut,
World Circus. Sure enough, album opener "Heart Attack" propels thrash metal of such a frenzied nature at singer
Mike Sanders that he truly seems to be experiencing a massive coronary while trying to enunciate all of those lyrics in his improbably high vocal range. Luckily, his life is spared so that he can carry on shrieking his way through another nine heart-palpitating tracks, although some listeners may find themselves wishing that weren't the case. For what it's worth, standout offerings like "Social Overload," "False Prophets," and the title track contain revealing traces of
Toxik's roots in more melodic and deliberately paced classic '80s metal. This notion, in conjunction with their sociopolitical messages, tends to leave the quartet stranded somewhere between
Queensrÿche and
Joey Belladonna-fronted
Anthrax -- not a bad place to get stranded, come to think of it. But
Toxik unfortunately lacked the higher caliber of songwriting imagination that made similarly hybrid outfits of the period, such as
Hades and
Watchtower, slightly more tolerable, and, in the end, most of
World Circus simply flashes by in a hopelessly messy blur.
Toxik's next album,
Think This, saw
Sanders replaced by the slightly less strident
Charles Sabin, but there was no fixing
Christian's songwriting or desperate need to overplay, resulting in an arguably even more convoluted and overwrought recording. ~ Eduardo Rivadavia