A phenomenal debut album of this Chicago crew, originally released back in 1985 through Combat Records, has been finally re-released with some bonus demo tracks. It made “Amnesty” crispier. It must be noted this edition is to commemorate ZOETROPE`s late drummer, Barry Stern. The music itself is awesome speed/thrash, powerful as fuck, despite all these years. Well, it’s been thirty years since this stuff has been recorded, and, still, this stuff fucking crushes from our loudspeakers. All right, if you haven’t gotten to know this band before, and you are into bands like EXCITER, METALLICA, NUCLEAR ASSAULT or WHIPLASH, hem, this stuff is going to kill you totally. It is really hard to believe the band`s unique music has not been too well received. It is even more incomprehensible as this album was released when this sort of music was extremely popular. ZOETROPE is a typical band to have existed back then. Weirdly, it didn’t happen so. They released two more albums („A Life of Crime”, 1987 and „Mind over Splatter”, 1993) and split up. Had this band been more determined or recorded some more albums at the time, well, maybe they might`ve been more successful? The music world has its own rules. Anyways, let`s enjoy it as we have been given such an amazing album like this one. This, no doubt about it at all, timeless album brings us a huge dose of condensed energy; when combined with very catchy, powerful riffs it all results in a piece of great music. It is, too, nice this disk features bonus demo tracks recorded back in 1983-85. It completes the whole album very well. 17 tracks of blazing speed/thrash are still impressive, really. Wish we had more music like this. Don’t ignore this material – you are just obliged to have it on your shelves together with other must-haves of yours! LWS