Evile
Enter the Grave

The Evile are 5 big guys who were born musically at the wrong time in the wrong place.

How else to define a band formed in 2000 to play an obsolete genre like thrash metal, moreover in the land of Albion, a country not exactly renowned for this subgenre (a precious exception being the Sabbat, and other minor combos like Xentrix or Slammer)? Despite these discouraging premises, our heroes persist in mistreating their instruments with commendable stubbornness, and after an introductory EP in 2004 they release, 3 years later, the work at hand, with the amusing title "Enter The Grave", which will bring them out of anonymity and prove to be one of the cornerstones of the flourishing thrash revival movement still bubbling in the metal underground, with names like Violator, Municipal Waste, Fueled By Fire, Bonded By Blood, and so on. Unfortunately, the very recent death of the bassist, right on the eve of the release of the second CD, casts serious shadows on the band's future.

Produced by none other than Flemming Rasmussen, the album stands as a slavish reiteration of the typical bay-area pattern, with a marked preference for the scraped riff of the golden years of Metallica, abundant doses of Exodus and Testament popping up here and there, and reaching the extremism of Slayer in the more violent stretches. The comparison with the authors of "Reign In Blood" is also indicated in virtue of the vocals, similar to a less acute Tom Araya, but not reaching his peaks of hysteria, while still providing the right dose of ferocity. The approach of the lead guitar stands out, revealing a certain melodic aftertaste reminiscent of the glorious Forbidden.

If you still go around with stretchy pants and denim vests with back patches, and nostalgically think "they don't make mid-seasons and thrash records like they used to," you will rejoice in listening to the bloody assaults of "Bathe In Blood" or the programmatic manifesto "Thrasher", or the more meditated structures of "We Who Are About To Die" and "Man Against Machine", which bring tempo changes and a compositional variety otherwise scarcely present in the album.

Those seeking complex and original sound architectures stay away, the cry here is thrash and 80's to the max.