It’s only natural for music consumers to sort bands into genres, to organize and classify. As genres age and branches of the family tree stretch out, the more diverse they become and the farther they stray from their original primordial form. Artists seeking to hone their individual style can peer backwards through time and mine the past for inspiration, or forge ahead to parts and sounds unknown. Swedish upstarts Eternal Evil seek to plant their flag along the spectrum of modern thrash, a genre that has become a surprise hot-button issue around the AMG universe. Their 2021 debut album The Warrior’s Awakening…Brings the Unholy Slaughter! garnered a less than enthusiastic reaction from our resident pointy-ear Felagund, citing a sacrifice of “essential memorability for monotonous haste”. Apparently undeterred, the Stockholm quartet have swapped out their battle axes for a box of tapered candles and a nice hooded robe and unleashed a new platter of blackened thrash, The Gates Beyond Mortality. Have they heeded sage words of advice or stubbornly continued down a beaten and timeworn road?
Eternal Evil’s brand of thrash remains essentially unchanged. Weaving strands of Teutonic origin (Sodom, Destruction) with a Scandinavian penchant for tremolos and oppressive atmosphere, much of TGBM is maniacal, unrelenting, and rooted in classic 80’s thrash sound. Twin guitar performances by Adrian Tobar and Tobias Lindström are chock full of razor-sharp riffs and high-octane solos, while the new rhythm section of Adam Schmidt and Niklas Saari provides a solid foundation and much-needed speed checks in mid-tempo sections (“The Gates Beyond Mortality,” “The Cursed Trilogy”). Tobar’s vocal performance is suitably unhinged for thrash, and while I found his general pitch placement took some getting used to, his affinity for using screams around his vocal break is effective and memorable. Combining well-executed performances with a generous DR 10 master, TGBM is easy on the ears and worth repeat listens.
The level of songwriting on The Gates Beyond Mortality is where Eternal Evil has shown the most improvement. After an obligatory mood-setting introduction (coincidentally evoking the same Blade Runner-esque vibes from the recent Electrocutioner), the band launches into a triptych of tightly written, and more importantly catchy, tracks. “Guerilla Warfare” to “Funeral Prayers” are filled with memorable riffs that don’t overstay their welcome and partially-pitched choruses from Tobar that manage to stick in your ear. The choruses from “Funeral Prayers” and “Immolation” especially deserve mention as I found myself singing at random in spite of their wild-eyed Neanderthal nature. The band smartly pays attention to song length, with most tracks falling in or around 4 minutes, a sweet spot for a style that tends to begin and end somewhere in the vicinity of blistering tempos. Listening back to their debut album I—like Felagund—found a collection of promising riffs haphazardly arranged and dialed up to 11. Eternal Evil must have seen something similar because TGBM addresses a lot of these issues and represents a solid step forward into a more mature sound.
That being said, there are still nits to be picked across the album’s runtime. With the exception of the title track, all the songs that drift past the four-minute mark tend to feel unfocused and lack the immediacy and catchiness of their leaner brethren (“Signs of the Ancient Sin,” “The Astral Below,” “The Cursed Trilogy”). “The Cursed Trilogy” is an interesting experiment in long-form composition, but its diversions feel more like experimentation and it leaves the album without decisively shutting the door. Eternal Evil’s brand of thrash is nearly out of control by design, but there are times throughout the album when it feels like the performance is actually going off the rails (“Guerrilla Warfare” is the biggest culprit here). Your mileage may vary on this point, this is thrash after all, but some focus on overall tightness à la Kvaen or Hellripper could go a long way.
There’s no doubt about it, The Gates Beyond Mortality is a cut above The Warrior’s Awakening. Eternal Evil are early in their career but they’ve already shown the wherewithal to take their devil-may-care approach to blackened thrash and shape it into something leaner and more gripping. But to achieve a truly great modern thrash record they must reach out of the comfort zone of the genre to find a sound that sets them apart, creates a unique brand. The band’s moving in the right direction though, and fans of blackened thrash should keep a weather eye out for what comes next from these Swedes.
Rating: 3.0/5.0
DR: 10 | Format Reviewed: 128 kb/s mp3
Label: Listenable Records
Websites: facebook.com | Bandcamp
Releases Worldwide: October 27th, 2023
