This is the review I wrote for Ultimatum-Into The Pit On Amazon:
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
Ultimatum's Best Effort Yet, January 28, 2008
| By | Michel I. Newcomb - See all my reviews
 |
Over the past years I've been re-introduced to many thrash bands I lost track of over the years. This can be attributed to my discovery of Nolifetilmetal.com. Scott Water's metal collection is like nothing I've seen before and when I found out he was the vocalist of Ultimatum I was stunned to say the least. I had known about Ultimatum for many years though only a few songs here and there and liked what I heard. Unfortunately, their albums became increasingly difficult to find until now. Retroactive has made their previous albums available and though I didn't like them as much as many other thrash bands I was familiar with, it was still good quality thrash. Now with the release of Into The Pit, Ultimatum went from good thrash band to great thrash band (up there with Touniquet, Deliverance, Testament, Overkill, Vengeance Rising, and more). This is how thrash should be. Thundering double bass drums, shredding guitar solos, and aggressive vocals abound and I don't think any thrash fan wouldn't like this album. In previous reviews the only complaint I ever heard was Scott's vocals. I never understood it, Scott's voice is very unique and fit the music real well (sort of a mix of Bobby Blitz and Steve Souza). This time his vocals should cause those nay sayers to put their foot in their mouth with the power and aggressiveness of his vocals this time around (now he sounds similar to Obituary's John Tardy while maintaining his unique voice).
One For All: Great Overkill-like opening that starts the album off in grand thrash fasion. 4/5
Exonerate: Keeps the aggressiveness going while maintaining good melody. 4/5
Death Wish: Another great thrash song (notice a pattern here). 4/5
Blood Covenant: Still nothing to complain about. The guitar solos are even better this time around (it's nice for thrash guitarists to slow down now and then) and the melody is more noticable here. 4.5/5
Heart Of Metal: One of the best songs on this album. Awesome double bass work right before the chorus with lyrics that makes this a metal anthem of the highest order (I rank this with Toxic Waltz which is one of my favorite thrash songs ever). 5/5
Wrathchild: Great cover of an Iron Maiden classic with guitar solos that run you over like an semi-truck. 4.5/5
Transgressor: Not as great as the three before it but still a very solid thrash song. 3.5/5
Blink: A re-recording of a song origionally found on Symphonic Extremeties. Quite better than the origional which is no easy task (it's superiority is probably due to the better production). 4.5/5
Blind Faith: Another great thrash piece with lyrics that put a broad smile on this Christian's face. Guitarist Robert Gutierrez has no idea how to do a bad guitar solo. 4.5/5
Into The Pit: Hands down the best track on the entire album. This instrumental ranks up there with Metallica's Orion. Gutierrez shows that he is more than a one-dimentional thrash guitarist (he should be up there with the greats based on this song alone-superb solo). 5/5
Game Over: Another great thrash piece and a good way to close an album that should rank up there with the biggest names in thrash...nay, metal. 4/5
Subject: Dallas Black Review of Ultimatum's Into The Pit 
