Mike Howe’s untimely death earlier this week spurred on a lot of people to put on the excellent albums he recorded with Metal Church again. For the record, I don’t think either Howe or Metal Church have ever sounded as good as on those records, but I thought it might be interesting to take a look at the album that first brought him to prominence: debut album ‘Breaking Point’ by California’s Heretic. While Howe’s more sophisticated work with Metal Church deservedly got the most attention, ‘Breaking Point’ is actually an above-average heavy metal album that is simultaneously typically American and typically late eighties.

Through the years, I have noticed that I have mixed up songs from ‘Breaking Point’ and Abattoir’s second album ‘The Only Safe Place’ in my head. Howe’s voice is not that different from how Mike Towers sounds on that album, though Howe has a slightly more versatile voice. Musically, Heretic’s debut album isn’t too dissimilar from Abattoir’s second either. It is about equal parts eighties US power metal and relatively slow thrash metal. While Reverend, which guitarist Brian Korban and bassist Dennis Ohara would form a year later with former Metal Church singer David Wayne, is significantly more thrashy than Heretic, there are more than a few mid-tempo thrash riffs on ‘Breaking Point’.

Ultimately, that reliance on mid-tempo is probably what made ‘Breaking Point’ more obscure than it deserved to be. It makes the album feel slightly longer than it is and it could probably have used one or two faster songs in the middle, though Korban and fellow guitairst Bob Marquez do churn out a number of excellent riffs and many of the songs don’t need to be any faster than they are. ‘And Kingdoms Fall’, for instance, might have been a faceless thrasher rather than the very stately, excellently constructed heavy metal track it is would it have had a higher tempo.

When the band does speed up, however, it does account for some of the better moments on the album. Opening track ‘Heretic’ doesn’t last much longer than two minutes after its acoustic intro, but does show how good American heavy metal could be in the eighties. Similarly, ‘Let ‘Em Bleed’ steamrolls along quite nicely and emphasizes its agression effectively by having breaks in the action. On the other side of the spectrum, closing track ‘The Search’ is an epic semi-ballad that sports a couple of great guitar solos. ‘Enemy Within’ and the highly dynamic ‘Time Runs Short’ are other highlights.

Calling ‘Breaking Point’ things like workmanlike and solid would in a way do the material a disservice, as those words are often not used as positively as they may come across. But the fact is that that is exactly what ‘Breaking Point’ is: a very solid eighties heavy metal album with well-written and – most notably – very well-arranged songs. The album kind of got lost in the shuffle due to it being the thing Mike Howe did before he joined a more successful band, but viewed on its own merits, it is one of the better albums of its kind released at the time. If you like your traditional heavy metal with a shot of thrash without it sounding too much like actual thrash metal, Heretic should be right up your alley.

Recommended tracks: ‘Heretic’, ‘And Kingdoms Fall’, ‘Let ‘Em Bleed’, ‘Time Runs Short’