Wednesday, 27 November 2013

Evil Machine - War In Heaven



EVIL MACHINE - War In Heaven (ARACHNOPHOBIA Records - CD 2013)
Here we celebrate two debuts: one of Arachnophobia Records and second of the band called Evil Machine. The latter has been formed by Cyjan from Dead Infection, who was supported by Hal (Vader, Abused Majesty, Hermh) and Cyprian (Hate, Pyorrhoea). They worked long to get their debut CD done… the whole process must have been a struggle for the band, as it took them about seven years to record “War in Heaven”. Luckily for us the band had enough determination to finish it and now we can finally listen to Evil Machine… I guess it is also very important to mention that the band invited some great guest musicians to leave their trace on their music, what certainly spiced up the entire album and made it even more interesting. And I can admit that now, when I’ve listened to “War in Heaven” about 20 times, I really fuckin like this album a lot.
I do admit though that my first impression was just mediocre. I guess I expected to hear slightly different kind of music; considering the band’s name, the artwork for the album, band’s photos and everything around it I actually thought it will be truly fast, uncompromising, evil and utterly bestial war metal. Meanwhile “War in Heaven” is slightly different and stylistically it is a pure worship of the traditional metal of death, thrash and black, mainly influenced by the cult records from the 80’s. If I mention here such classic bands as Hellhammer, Samael, Venom, (early) Sodom and Kreator, Rotting Christ, Varathron, with some Australian bands, then you may have some idea about the music of Evil Machine with its archaic riffs, mainly slow or mid paced tempo (you’ll find fast blasting tempo only couple of times like in killer “Cross Meant Death”), ghoulish vocals, obscure, evil atmosphere and that feeling, passion...
And as I mentioned on the first listen I wasn’t much impressed… hmm, maybe I didn’t pay enough attention, but with every next listen this music grew on me and now I am able to worship it. Evil Machine really did awesome job here, composed several killer tracks, arranged them perfectly and with the diversity of the music plus with some killer surprises, “War in Heaven” is just an essential album. That diversity may actually be one of the stronger factors of Evil Machine. There are songs, which are close to Hellhammer, some other are more like old, archaic thrash and finally there’re also moments, which personally remind me the old Greek scene. Arrghhh, just listen to the song called “DiabeÅ‚” – it is probably my favourite track from “War in Heaven”, quite different to the rest of the material, but with such a malignant atmosphere, some awesome riffs and most importantly with great guest vocals of Cezar from the almighty Christ Agony. Another songs, which I just must recommend are “Four Demons of Apocalypse”, “Cross Meant Death”, “Bloody Emperor”, “Jerusodoma” and finally also “Evil Machine”… Each offers something truly awesome and has something characteristic, if not a riff, which will make you bang your head like crazy then it is a memorable chorus. But really, every song here is damn good and with two covers (of which I especially like the vicious version of old Onslaught classic) it turns out that “War in Heaven” is close to… I don’t want to say perfection, because it’s not “To Mega Therion”, but for me it nailed this kind of music brilliantly and if after listening to it I still have some songs massacring the guts inside me then it means this is a more than just a good album. Recommended!
Standout tracks: “DiabeÅ‚”, “Four Demons of Apocalypse”, “Cross Meant Death”, “Bloody Emperor”, “Jerusodoma”
Final rate: 80/100

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