ASPID, Manqueta (1991, demo)

The skull:
“What? Yeah, I’m a little cracked up in the back, but I think that looks kind of cool anyway, and hey, check out these pearly whites! You don’t see a lot of skulls with a full set of gleaming choppers like these, do you, baby? Hey, where are you going? Why you gotta be leaving? That’s okay, though, cause I like the view. Oh yeah, you know I got eyes, or something. And they like what they see baby, so why don’t you back that thing up? Come on, baby, bring it on back to Skully!”

The music:
There have been a lot of Aspids, but this isn’t the best one. The best Aspid were a Russian tech thrash band who released the excellent Extravasation album in 1993. But this Aspid, the Spanish one, at least started out okay. (For the record, “aspid” is another name for the European viper.) Manqueta is reasonably good speed metal, something of a cross between Agent Steel and early Arakain. Good riffing and solid, high pitched vocals (with lyrics in Spanish.) The sound and the style scream 1986, but as this demo came out in 1991, Aspid were clearly a little behind the times. Sadly, they would later get with the times by dumbing down and moving in a groove metal direction. But for a little while in the early 90s, Aspid were a pretty cool band, and speed metal afficianados would do well to track this one down for their collections.
— Friar Johnsen