Apoch's Metal Review - Evile: Infected Nations CD Review

Discography	Discography covers all information available up to day of review and is updated if future albums are reviewed.
Full-Length(s):	Enter the Grave (2007) • Infected Nations (2009) • Infected Nations (2011)
EP(s):	All Hallows Eve (2004)
Single(s):	Bonus Demos (2007) • Thrasher (2008) • Infected Nation (2009) • Cemetery Gates (2010) • Cult (2011)
Demo(s):	Hell Demo (2006)
Live CD(s):	Live at Hammerfest (EP) (2010)

Review

After a widely acclaimed debut full length release, as well as being featured on the popular video game series Rock Band, Evile bring us their second studio full length album, Infected Nations. However, during the span of the past two years between the albums, somewhere the band decided it was already time to change up their sound and attempt to find their own musical sound in the Thrash community. Infected Nations find's the band far from incorporating riffs and musical assaults from the golden days of Thrash, and presents us a more complex, but overall bland, follow up release.

The one band that could very well have picked up where Slayer left off in the future has toned their music down to a much slower pace, being more of a mid-tempo beat, with random blast beats and face melting assaults littered throughout. As stated, the material on here becomes a bit more complex, but due to the slower pace, these riffs wind up just being rather bland and would have easily benefitted from being sped up just a bit more. The title track, "Infected Nation", for example, will probably cause you to lose your urge to even want to listen to this CD thanks to it's somewhat easy-to-listen-to guitar hooks and altered, much lower, and insanely repetative vocal styles and harmonizations.

Aside "Nosophoros", which has the best band seizure-like Thrash-revival moment for a guitar solo on the entire album, it all goes downhill from here. Starting at "Genocide", the album becomes insanely generic, and where as in the start of the album the vocals were tolerable, by this point you'll notice that there's no real change in how the vocals are done, standing at the same monotone effort unless the vocalist tried to reach a higher or louder note, such as during the generic chorus to "Plague To End All Plague", but in the end fails miserably and sounds just as monotone. You could also stop a track mid-way through and listen to another and barely hear any real difference, such as the track "Plague To End All Plagues" with "Nosophoros" or even "Devoid Of Thought".

"Devoid Of Thought" is really where the release starts to pick up with a heavier, faster feel to it, but that's not saying much. After five tracks of boring, repetative music, the rest acts almost as if it were a Progressive song meshed with a Slayer-like guitar solos. "Time No More" is one of the only two real promising track on here with some really fast guitar riffs, bland as they may be, but the real kick in the face is that the song pretty much sounds as if it the band wrote half a song and decided to just stop the song at four minutes. The real promising track would be "Metamorphosis", which just sounds tighter then the rest of the album, the vocals actually suit the music (except with they get louder and they sound shakey), and doesn't come off as repetative as the rest of the songs on the album. Knowing that, you can safely enter "Hundred Wrathful Deities" since the lack of vocals really benefits the track, and there's much more being done with the music as far as the guitar work, and even the drums go, ultimately slapping you in the face as if it were taunting you by saying "Look what you could have had but we decided to not do it" kind of way.

In the end, Infected Nations is pretty bad. Even if you approach this album without hearing their debut album, you'll more then likely say the same thing. The music on here, with the exception of the last two tracks, is pretty sub-standard, even though there's additional complexity to the guitars on this one. The sudden change of vocals and style really brings Evile into a whole new standpoint, leaving you wondering why they even decided to keep the name in the first place. With some moments here and there showing their thrash roots, one listen to this is sort of like you're going downhill quick right from the start, but know it's safe since the hill you started on wasn't too high up to begin with. Had the band concentrated on bringing the music they present on their instrumental track "Hundred Wrathful Deities" on here, and not gone the way of a lower, almost failed Metallica sound and vocals, then Infected Nations could have been a solidifying release to having the band find their own sound.

Physical review copy of this release provided by:
Personal funds.

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