METAL REVIEW: Evil Survives- Metal Vengeance (88/100)

I finally had enough dead time on my hands to get one of these reviews done. I really want to keep up the pace with my writing, but school and my laziness have kinda been bogging me down. Hopefully I'll get more of these done in the future, because there are a lot of really good albums out there that people should know about and a lot of shitty albums out there that I should warn people to avoid. Which reminds me. If you want me to review that one shitty album you love, feel free to drop me a line. Can't promise I'll be nice though. In fact, expect me to spew verbal venom about it....I'm kinda rambling here, so I'll just go right ahead and post the review.

EVIL SURVIVES--METAL VENGEANCE

If there’s one thing trad metal needs to have in order to be successful, it’s the rock n’ roll attitude. Whether a band exerts that attitude through their music or their image doesn’t matter, as long as it’s present. It’s pretty hard for any band to fail if they really put their all into playing their music, and that is inevitably the reason why Metal Vengeance is deserving of praise. Yes, it doesn’t always sound good, per se, but it never fails to keep you interested or entertained for the duration of the record. I liken it to bobbing for apples if you didn’t have any teeth. Sure, it’s really uncomfortable and awkward at times when you can’t exactly replicate what other people with teeth had done back in the day (Iron Maiden and Satan, to give a few easy examples) and you’re spilling water everywhere, but you’re having stupid fun the whole time and the rare occasion that you actually manage to pull out an apple is awe-inspiring.

What I meant behind that last analogy is that Evil Survives is sloppy as hell. The songwriting has all the coordination and subtlety of staggering drunk- everything on this album is in-your-face and everywhere at once. These guys jump from riff to riff almost suddenly, often throw choruses and solos out of nowhere, and have a vocalist that seems to be ad-libbing half the time. The bass twists and turns its way in and out of the forefront of the album in a stumbling, yet oddly interesting fashion. But none of that really matters in the long run, because, like the drunk, even though Evil Survives staggers about and often go off track and aren’t very graceful, they still have a purpose; they eventually wander home or find a taxi or something. Their songs actually have a destination- even though their delivery isn’t all that fantastic they still manage to get the point across. They manage to do so without blatantly plagiarizing any other band, either. Yes, the Maidenesque influences are still very present, but unlike most bands formed in the 21st century who play in this style, (I’m lookin’ at YOU White Wizzard) they don’t simply try to emulate this tried and true sound to the best of their ability, they actually expand on it, adding their own little spices and tinges.

I mentioned the vocalist in passing in that last paragraph, and I’d like to add a little more detail to what I said earlier, because the vocals on this album are indeed worthy of a review of their own. They’re frantic, aggressive, sometimes horribly tuneless and reminiscent of a 13-year-old metal fan singing along horribly to his favourite Maiden song, they’re friggin GREAT. Even though they’re not pitch-perfect in tone all the time (or almost any of the time for that matter) or have any sort of flow or grace, Karl Warkentin always seems to know exactly how he should sing to fit the current feel of the song. He’s got a great ear for the music and is really putting 110% into what he’s doing. He’s far from my favourite vocalist because it’s near IMPOSSIBLE to sing along to any of his vocal lines (you won’t hear me randomly bursting into a melody-deprived screeching of “CAN’T STOP…CAN’T STOP…THE VAAAAAMPIRE AMBUUUUUSHH” anytime soon) but he does have his moments, and when those moments occur, it’s fantastic. A random example of one of these moments off the top of my head would be the “whoa oh ohhhhh” section of the song “Metal” which is without question one of the highlights of the album. It's the first time the album really "clicks" after flailing around with the energetic opening track (Evil Will Survive) and the first half of the song.

Ah, but what would the realm of traditional metal be without its fair helping of cheese? Fear not, my friends, because this album has more cheese than a fucking Immortal video. While the crazy-ass falsettos that I should have mentioned in my previous paragraph certainly play a part in contributing to this ridiculous dairy factory, a lot of the overall cheese factor of this album draws from the lyrical themes, (in this day and age, it’s nearly impossible to write a song about vampires without it sounding really fucking ridiculous) the gratuitous amount of solos scattered throughout (solos aren’t cheesy by default, but the ones found on Metal Vengeance are. They’ve got too much widdly widdly widdly and not enough doo dee doo doo doo in them, y’know what I’m saying?) and the “happy” nature of the music. Even though there’s a lot of underlying grit in the guitars, the good ol’ galloping NWOBHM guitar leads make it really difficult to listen to some of these tracks without blushing just a little bit. This album is, in the vaguest sense of the term, a “guilty pleasure” of mine. I realize that there’s a lot of glaring flaws about the album that the band don’t care about enough to even ATTEMPT to hide, but I simply turn the other cheek and keep banging my head. Something about these songs just gives me that giddy feeling that makes me want to listen to it over and over again- I wasn’t quite sure how to describe it, until I looked at the album art for this release- it depicts a young, naïve boy being swept into the fantasy that is heavy metal. That may not be exactly what the image was trying to portray, but the image still shows what I mean: This album contains all the little elements that make this NWOBHM style magical. The goofy lyrics, the galloping riffs, the stylistically amorphous, charismatic vocalist, the fancy solos- it all just amounts to a delicious helping of SHIT THIS SHIT IS FUCKING AWESOME. They may not have the most monumental riffs or catchiest choruses and sometimes sound a little unsure of what they should be doing, but Evil Survives is metal to the fucking bone. Their music sweats pure steel from every single pore and listening to this album hearkens back to the good ol’ days, when you were a zit-faced cretin whose balls had yet to drop, listening to Number of the Beast or Master of Puppets or Painkiller for the first time, unaware of what lay ahead. Back when metal was a completely new world for you. This album recaptures that immaculate feeling that one gets from discovering something new and strange and wonderful, and even if it lacked everything else that made it great, I’d STILL highly recommend it for this reason. This isn’t essential, but makes a fantastic addition to any metal fan’s collection.