Dream Death-Journey into mystery

I am pretty sure it was around Christmas of 1987 that I bought this one on cassette. Now keep in mind at this time I was living on a steady diet of thrash, hardcore and crossover so just mainly fast stuff. That was true for most of the time between about 1986 an 1989. That night I wanted to buy something I hadn't heard before and I settled on Pittsburgh's Dream Death just because they were on New Renaissance. They were home of thrash acts I liked then including Executioner, Blood Feast and At War. I got the cassette home, stuck into the player and plopped into my bed waiting for the speed to overpower me. Wait, this wasn't thrash, it was heavy but not fast enough. The vocals were rough, but not as harsh as what I was used to. My immediate response was that I had wasted my money on something that wasn't thrash and therefore I was not going to listen to it. Yes, my tasted really were even more limited back then and they have not opened up all that much over the years. I was living for stuff like Slayer, Kreator, Sodom, Death, Dark Angel and the like. Anyways over the next year or so I played it every once in a while and liked it some. Part of that was because my appreciation for doom was growing although that genre was really kind of small back then. Then maybe around late 88/early 89 my Dream Death tape snapped. Quite honestly I forgot all about this band until a few years ago when I stumbled upon a review of it referring to it as a classic. I searched around and discovered that others felt the same way. Another quick search showed that "Journey into mystery" had now come out on CD. Every once in a while I would take a look and see how much it was going for, but I never bought it. Then a few weeks ago I came upon and auction ending soon and picked it up for around $7. When I got it was actually different, but better than I remembered. A number of the songs were of a heaviness pace level comparable to early Celtic Frost. The vocals were cleaner than that though. The music did at times dip to a slower pace too, but they always held on to this heavy barrage of tight, chugging riffs. The production was also well above the normal New Renaissance records' standard. Normally many albums I heard and liked back in the 80's and then heard again in recent years after a long gap tended to sound not as heavy or fast as I remembered them. However I really missed out on this one. Classic? That's not a label I like to throw around easily. I will say that this is a darn good metal album for the time and it holds up well. They probably were slightly ahead of their time and I am sure that a number of doom bands who popped up over the last say twenty years have heard this one and been influenced by it.