siLLy puPPy The Santa Rosa based SKITZO was one of the original bands to emerge in the San Francisco Bay Area thrash scene that spawned a large number of bigwigs including Metallica, Death Angel, Forbidden, Possessed and the first of them all Exodus. This band formed in 1981 but never found the success that many other thrash metal bands from the area have experienced however vocalist / guitarist Lance Ozanix did appear on an episode of Judge Judy for vomiting on a woman at a SKITZO show and lost. He had to pay $500 in damages.

This band has had two phases. The first involved guitarist / vocalist Ken Springer who was killed in a motorcycle accident in 1995 however the band carried on to the present day without him. SKITZO released a number of demos in the 1980s and the EP “Derangeous” in 1989 but didn’t release a full-length until the 1992 cassette-only “Evilution” came out. This album, technically their second was the first issued on CD and the last album to feature Springer who would meet his demise the following year of its release.

SYNUSAR’SUKUS may seem like a bizarre esoteric title for an album but once you’re in on the joke and pronounce it as “sign us or suck us” then you begin to get the gist of SKITZO’s in yer face fuck it all sense of humor. In fact SKITZO seemed to have one foot in world of comedy and the other in thrash metal. Just look at some of the titled such as “Infant Head Surgery” and “Famous Monster Phone Sex” and you can see that the band had the 80s hangover of immature humor that was quite common in funk metal bands as well as other crossover thrash bands like S.O.D. This album has only seen one original CD release on the Mourningstar label but has been available as a digitally remastered downloadable on Bandcamp since 2016.

Basically SYNUSAR’SUKUS can be divided into two styles. The first six tracks are feature some kick ass thrash metal attacks with excellent riffing, headbanging bass and drum attacks and the classic speed rap type of thrash metal that was all the rage in the 1980s. Starting with the seventh track “War of the Gargantuas,” the album drifts off a bit in to comedy metal territory with this particular track existing somewhere between thrash metal, hardcore punk and a bit of classic 80s heavy metal. “Infant Head Surgery” is a short minute-long interlude that features some spoken word samples and clean guitar runs and is basically an intro to “Tooxbox Murders” which sounds more like an alternative metal style of Pearl Jam with a few juiced up aspects. The closing “Styrofoam Heads” and “Famous Monster Phone Sex” are nothing more than silly sound collages based skits with some nice guitar freakery.

It’s obvious why this band never gained any traction because at this late stage in 1994 the local thrash metal scene had already declined and these guys despite forming early on in the game didn’t manage to get their act together in time to cash in on it. It’s too bad because the first seven tracks are showcase some extremely competent thrash metal playing that features some crossover over features with a clear influence from Motorhead and hardcore punk. The last part of the album while not without merit actually cheapens the album’s impact as if some long lost demos were added on to create an album’s worth of material. It certainly would be more consistent if released as a killer EP.

While SKITZO will likely never go down in history as one of the Bay Area most talented thrash metal bands, they certainly deserve to be recognized as one of the earliest contributors to the scene which helped propel the area into the limelight of the early extreme metal years. Altogether there were well over 100 bands in the 80s thrash metal scene so clearly not every band could become the next best thing but these lesser known bands are interesting to check because their approach was a lot different than many of the better known bands and clearly these underground bands left their impact in the way of influencing other bands that did go on to bigger and better things. Not the cream of the thrash metal crop but well worth checking out.