Have you ever experienced a posthumous release? I guess not, so this “De-Grunged” by Dutch, non-existing anymore, Disturbing Foresights is probably the scoop. The album was recorded in the Rotterdam Excess studios in 1993: indeed, in the middle of the Grunge explosion ("Nevermind" from Nirvana is from 1991), and in that era there was no place for thrash or crossover anymore. The album was recorded in 1993, but when bass player Koen met the label boss of Deity Down things started moving, the recordings were remastered and thus these polder boys managed to surpass the record that “Chinese Democracy” should have for taking the longest time to get released: 1993 to 2008, 15 years! Well done chaps!

Disturbing Foresights: the name has a bit of a punkish or hardcore feeling and that is totally correct. The vocals are real punkish; a bit comparable to Kurt Brecht from D.R.I. or Danny Lilker, just more towards punk. And yes, I can see some musical links to D.R.I. as well, although D.R.I. was more intense. It is a kind of mix between D.R.I. and Nuclear Assault on the one hand, a tiny bit of funk/ rap metal (dead, but very popular around the time of Anthrax and Dog Eat Dog in the late eighties) and punk. Not really my cup of tea, but hey…
The opening tunes make me think a lot about Dog Eat Dog, yet from ‘Positive’ on the other influences I just mentioned kind of start making their appearances on the album. In all honesty I must admit that bands like D.R.I. and Nuclear Assault were more intense, but it can match any punk album…

“De-Grunged” is not really an essential release; it has riffs we all know already, but it’s not that bad as you may expect after being on a shelf 15 years. Disturbing Foresights is not extreme at all and takes us back to the roots from the mid eighties, but it also could have been either which band. The production is rather shallow and one-dimentional: a bit demo-like of a good recording in 2008. For that reason I would recommend the album only to the old school crossover punk fans. Yet the value of this release is set in the fact that it got released after all. Especially dedicated to Koen I will therefore play an old album by Hades… “If at first you don’t succeed”.