Living in Guelph, Ontario in the late ‘80s must have been a really shitty deal, if Razor’s classic thrash-blast Violent Restitution is any indication. Formed in Guelph in 1984, Razor quickly became synonymous with suburban Ontario speed-freak dirt-bags, presumably running around with live chainsaws in a maniacal revenge plot against whoever managed to fuck them over on any given day.Violent Restitution, Razor’s sixth and arguably best album, dropped in 1988 and revels in the glory of the ear-piercing wail of lead singer Stace “Sheepdog” McLaren and guitarist Dave Carlo’s patented hyperactive guitar speed-riffing. The album’s third song, “Taste the Floor,” fully includes a mid-song interlude featuring an unnamed perp firing up a chainsaw right after McLaren screams his case about being a true metalhead, not a fucking poser or “panzy” with a “z” (why the chainsaw doesn’t show up in the title track, the ultimate violent revenge song, we’ll never know…).Yes, folks, this was Canadian thrash metal in 1988, but alongside fellow Canuck head-banging hell-raisers such as Sacrifice, Exciter, and Voivod, Razor seemed decidedly more, um, coked up and serious? If hyper-speed thrash with lyrics seeped in violence and vigilante payback was the order of the day for a bunch of heshers in some shitty rehearsal space in Guelph’s industrial district, what in the fuck was going on in the city of Guelph itself? I mean, the buildup in the title track goes, and I quote, “Here I come, now you’re dead, got your woman, yeah, in my bed, now I laugh, while you cry, it’s been fun, but now you die … DIE!” Clearly, these guys weren’t messing around.Living in the relative safety of coastal British Columbia, I often pictured Guelph, Ontario as the hotbed of back-alley shooting galleries, corner store robberies gone dreadfully awry, and throwing that fucking shit-stain who was banging your wife out of a third-story window. Don’t quite understand how I came to that conclusion? Listen to McLaren’s Jack Daniels-induced megashriek (all 27 seconds of it, with a maniacal laugh at the end, how the fuck does he do that?!) at the beginning of opener “The Marshall Arts,” then Carlo on full overdrive, riffing his arms from the socket, a rhythm section sandblaster behind them both, and tell me you wouldn’t think exactly the same thing about Guelph, Ontario. I was, after all, safe in my comfortable West Coast suburbanite home with my trusty Commodore 64 computer and my alphabetized thrash-metal tape collection, all tucked far away from guys 90 minutes west of Toronto who ate beer cans for breakfast. (Lucky Lager only.)Razor’s Violent Restitution is probably the ugliest, scariest, grossest, horniest, violent scumbag thrash metal album of all time. Yeah, yeah, Sheepdog and Carlo now have a very public feud going that was only spurned on by novel-length posts (and counter-posts) on metal-for-life website Brave Words and Bloody Knuckles, which only serves to totally bum out the whole Razor mystique (do actual chainsaw-wielding maniacs bicker back and forth like old ladies on heavy metal websites? Nope.).Still, crank this 14-song mother up and feel that flesh-piercing burn. Can I share something else? My stepdad has had a brutal looking chainsaw scar on his right bicep since the very first time he rode into our lives on his trusty Harley-Davidson when I was eight years old. I’m still convinced Stace “Sheepdog” McLaren was somehow responsible.Jason Schreurs is a writer who is on Twitter - @jasonschreurs
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