THE EVERSCATHED – The Devil’s Cross

Death Metal from Chicago, Illinois, straight from the garage to the stage. The Everscathed are real underground, and for that cannot be praised enough. That is where Metal comes from, where it all began, with aggression and a healthy “f**k it all” attitude towards mainstream and music business, just like Punk. That is also the breeding ground for new bands like this, and it is one of the greatest pleasures for Metal fans to discover the new, fresh underground band next door, or next continent.

Unfortunately, not every band in the underground is destined for higher purpose, and The Everscathed in the state of compositions and musical abilities they are in right now seem to be one of those. The EP contains five Death Metal songs of reasonable quality, but without standing out of the sea of bands of the same style, one which is not very rebellion anymore anyway, but has created their own kind of main stream.

Three of the songs are self composed, and although the band chose the weakest track to open the EP with, the other two songs are quite reasonable: “Murder Most Foul” is almost technical and has several excellent riffs, which make this by far the best on The Devil’s Cross. Also “Demonscorned” can score with a racing fast beginning and a break into Doomy sounds, although the end sounds a bit like a recording accident. But maybe that was intended.

The remaining two songs are new interpretations of classic Songs by Samael and Cancer. The Chicago three piece does not do bad a job, and it is nice that the singer is still understandable and not too guttural, creating a bit of melody in a style in which occasionally musicians think they can do without that. What does harm the listening enjoyment severely is the bad production, which is even by underground standards not up to today’s possibilities. Especially the drum sound is quite annoying.

Judged by the Death Metal scene of today, The Everscathed managed to release an EP which is alright, but fails to leave a lasting impression. The band sounds as if they have some room for improvement as they do not sound tight at all on any of the tracks, but then again: it is underground Death Metal, and one can hardly be harsh in criticizing something which is done with enthusiasm and heart blood as a self produced CD like this is. Unfortunately, in comparison to the standards set by contemporary Death Metal releases, The Devil’s Cross cannot be considered anything but barely average and for genre lovers only.

But for the real Death Metal fans it is certainly worth checking out, and the band streams several tracks on their MySpace site including the good “Murder Most Foul” and the two songs from their latest Promo CD, of which especially “The Unknown Suffer” is worthy to be checked out. Please visit their MySpace site and get an earful of their sound, and then make up your mind if this is something to treasure, or to forget. If underground stuff was for everybody, it would not be underground, would it? If you like the music, you can download some stuff for free but make sure you give the guys a pat on the shoulder by leaving a message.