DESCRIPTION:
Band: Protector
Album: The Heritage
Country of Origin: Germany
Release Date: 1993
Label: C&C / Major Records International / Rough Trade Germany

-- http://www.myspace.com/protectorofficial --

Playlist:
1. Mental Malaria 00:00
2. Scars Bleed Life Long 05:44
3. The Heritage 08:56
4. Lost Properties 12:58
5. Convicts on the Street 19:32
6. Protective Unconsciousness 24:36
7. Paralizer 28:08
8. Chronology 29:02
9. Palpitation 32:58
10. Outro 37:41

Total Length: 39:29

Protector is primarily known for their death thrash of the mid and late 1980's. They in part helped develop the Teutonic death metal scene and arguably on a small scale the death metal scene through out Europe. The years leading up to their final album saw them getting a progressively heavier, faster and more developed death metal sound. When Olly Wiebel replaced original vocalist Martin Missy in late 1989 the band turned to a more developed death metal sound. By the time "The Heritage" was released in 1993 hundreds of bands were producing full on death metal albums, but none are as balanced as "The Heritage".

The album is full of tempo changes, even more so than their previous album, "A Shedding Of Skin". This does not mean though that it is in the least bit slow, in fact the song "Chronology" has the fastest thrash/skank beats that the band ever produced. The album is moderately technical, but the most important thing on this album is the high quality musicianship that it possesses. This album is the most well written death metal album that I have personally ever listened to, it is on the same scale as Dark Angel's technical thrash album "Time Does Not Heal", Incubus's "Beyond The Unknown", Cancer's "The Sins Of Mankind", and Armagedon's "The Invisible Circle". Take for example the song "Lost Properties", the intro sends a chill down your spine, they played a very fast tremolo riff at very high tuning to get the effect that sounds like sea gulls, highly innovative, and just shows how serious Protector was in making a masterpiece death metal album.

Most bands that play as fast as Protector have a hard time stepping back and composing a album that is not only fast but that has substance to it. For Protector, this album was at their pinnacle, because with as many albums as they had under their belt they had the knowledge and experience necessary to focus and hone in on a sound that they could call their own. In most previous albums they strived to be fast and heavy with less emphasis on control. "A Shedding Of Skin" is where the band began to focus on maturing their sound and in many ways helped develop what they did on this album. In a macro view of the album it is apparent that a great deal of time and money was spent in production. This is in stark contrast to the majority of extreme metal bands in the early 1990's, even well known death metal bands of the time like Morbid Angel and Deicide did not have as great of production and clarity in sound on their albums in comparison to "The Heritage".

In conclusion, this album is the epitome of death metal and I am not afraid to say that this is in every way what I consider to be the best death metal album of all time, based on its level of composition, musicianship, innovation, production, speed, and heaviness.

- deanbean, June 17th, 2011

http://www.metal-archives.com/reviews/Protector/The_Heritage/5688/deanbean

DISCLAIMER: All right reserved to their respective owners. I don't own this. I don't get money or any kind of benefits from this.