My Uncle Was in a Thrash Band and the EP Still Slaps: Mortar - Created (EP Review) Recorded: October 18, 21 & 22, 1992

 

There's something quietly remarkable about a demo that refuses to sound like one. The five-track EP from Mortar was born in 1992 as a self-produced cassette, the kind of artifact that circulated hand-to-hand in the tape-trading underground, passed between people who knew. When Toxic Records pressed it to black disc and gave it a proper release, they weren't just reissuing a recording. They were confirming what anyone who'd already heard it understood: this thing had no business sounding this harsh, this focused, or this complete.

If you're already a fan of early Metallica, Exodus, Forbidden, or the Midwest underground thrash scene, Mortar will feel like a band you somehow missed, and Created will feel like the record you should have had on rotation thirty years ago. Mortar operates in the tradition of American thrash that owes as much to the Bay Area's surgical precision as it does to the Midwest's rawer, less glamorous edge. The band consisted of Jim Todd on vocals, Brian T. Foster and Dave Dorocke (my uncle) on guitar, Oscar Kornak on bass, with Scott Rothschild on drums, and they were a tight, cohesive unit with a shared sense of purpose that's rare even among bands with years more seasoning. There are no weak links here, no passengers, and every member was doing exactly what the music needed, and the result was an EP that felt like a full band statement rather than a collection of demo tracks held together by proximity.

The rhythm section of Kornak and Rothschild is the engine that makes everything else possible. Rothschild's drumming is controlled and ferocious in equal measure. He doesn't overplay, but he doesn't leave space empty either, driving each track forward with the kind of instinctive authority that's either God-given or earned through relentless practice, probably both. Kornak locks in underneath him and provides a low-end anchor that gives the guitars room to be genuinely aggressive without the whole thing collapsing under its own weight. Todd, meanwhile, commands the front with a vocal approach that's more bark and snarl than theater no operatics, no false dramatics, just a voice that fits the music like a fist fits a wall.

The EP opens with "Determination," and the title isn't accidental. The track charges out of the gate with a propulsive riff structure that establishes the band's intent before the first minute is out. This isn't thrash as nostalgia or genre exercise, it's thrash as pure forward momentum, as a philosophy. Foster and Dorocke trade and layer guitar work that's technically confident without ever becoming self-indulgent, keeping the song lean and hostile where a lesser band might have buried the energy in showboating. It's an opener that sets the table correctly: you know exactly what kind of record you're in for, and you know it's going to be worth your time.

"Without Cause For Name" gives the EP its first real shift in weight. It's not a slowdown exactly, but the attack here is more deliberate, the riffing more grinding, and the song benefits from the change in approach. There's a tension that builds through the track before it opens back up into full-throttle aggression, and it demonstrates something important about Mortar: they're not a one-speed band. They understand dynamics even when everything is loud. The ability to vary their attack without losing the thread is what separates a good thrash band from a memorable one, and "Without Cause For Name" makes the case.

"First Fallen" arrives at the midpoint of the record and is where the interplay between Foster and Dorocke feels most purposeful. The dual-guitar arrangement isn't just textural, it's compositional, with both players contributing distinct voices that push the song forward rather than simply doubling each other. Todd's delivery here carries extra menace, and the combination of the lyrical aggression and the locked-in rhythm section makes "First Fallen" one of the EP's defining moments. It has the feel of a track that would have destroyed a room, live the kind of song you can picture people losing their minds to in a small, dark venue somewhere off the interstate.

"Evolution" follows and is arguably the EP's most replayable. There's a groove embedded beneath the aggression, a rhythmic intelligence to the riffing that gives the track more dimension than straightforward thrash often allows. It's still fast and still mean, but there's a swagger to it, a sense that the band is enjoying themselves inside the brutality. Rothschild's performance here is particularly sharp, navigating tempo and feel with a drummer's intelligence rather than just brute force. The title seems to be a throwaway pun, but the song itself earns something more serious.

The EP closes with the title track, "Created," and it's heavier and more deliberate in its construction than anything preceding it; the song feels like the band stepping back and taking stock, a final statement that's more considered, more architectural. The riff work is at its most composed, and the track builds with a sense of intention that gives the whole EP a satisfying shape in retrospect. It doesn't just end the record; it completes it. You get the sense that the sequencing was deliberate, that the band knew exactly what they were doing by saving this one for last.

What's remarkable about Created in retrospect isn't just that it holds up; it's that it holds up as a document of a band that had a real identity at a moment when countless other regional acts were content to borrow one. The Midwest thrash underground of the early nineties was crowded with bands chasing the coattails of their coastal influences, content to approximate rather than originate. Mortar didn't sound like they were trying to be anyone else. The influence of the Bay Area greats is audible: the clean aggression of early Metallica, the riff economy of Exodus, the technical ambition of Forbidden, but those are reference points, not blueprints proving that what Mortar built from those materials was distinctly their own; and that's not a small thing. 

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