Rating: 6.8

Country: USA

Release Date: 2006

Track list:
1. Overthrow the Sphere of Existence
2. Raging in Unrest
3. Halted Glory
4. Wounds of Confusion
5. Surgical Theater
6. The Everscathed
7. Evil Bleeds On
8. Shackled by Failure [mp3]
9. Cries of Damnation's Rebirth
10. ...to the Place of Death Begotten

Total Playing Time: 49:29

Band Website: The Everscathed

The Everscathed - Razors of Unrest

Bill Frickenstein - Vocals, Bass
Brice Dalzell - Guitar, Vocals
Tim Frickenstein - Drums

This honestly retrospective album gives plenty of opportunity to name-drop classic death/thrash bands. From the outset there is a fusion of old Cancer and Death, with slamming chords and harmonised notes driving the simple but continually evolving song structures. The enormously metallic bass guitar provides significant extra punch to a production that is admittedly unpolished.

"Raging in Unrest" is well positioned in the track order, as it demonstrates that this is a band that have a reverent attitude to the past rather than a desire to go grave-robbing for ideas. The varied atonality of this track carried through the tempo changes sets out an agenda that is morbid and textured. The third track has a passage that introduces Coroner/Destruction parallels and "Wounds of Confusion" has an outro that has the ghost of Chuck Schuldiner in its wake. "Surgical Theater" is the most edgy and disjointed song with a brooding mid-paced Incantation-tinged Obituary feel.

Of the latter half of this long album, "Evil Bleeds On" is the most varied, employing a catchy Possessed style divided by atmospheric doom that is by turns as festering as old Paradise Lost but then darkly melancholic like old My Dying Bride. The final track yields another surprise, bidding farewell with some murky Voivod guitar atonalities.

Overall the lack of vocals is not a problem as they are used effectively and have some grit and emotion like the vocalists of the classic acts revisioned here. This is a relatively long album but that is not why it comes across as sluggish. The playing could be tighter, the repetitive descending tom rolls are distracting and the tempo changes would have more impact if they were less blurred around the edges. The fundamental problem with this enjoyable album is that it clarifies what makes something classic whilst falling rather short of the mark of actually being classic. Simultaneously, I feel that the competent band members would have a lot to offer the new school if they are willing to step outside of their impenetrable castle.

September 14th, 2006