"Honored by Fire"

By Dark Starr

Based in Texas, these guys create some seriously extreme metal. This really rocks. I have to say that I’m not the biggest fan of that type of music, but this is pretty infectious. There are also only a couple moments where it suffers a bit from an overused formula. Beyond that, they change things up enough to keep interesting. Of course, several of the members of the band have some serious pedigrees, so that has to contribute to it. The band is made up of: singer Jason McMaster (Watchtower, Broken Teeth, Dangerous Toys), bassist Don Van Stavern (Riot, S.A.Slayer), drummer Shakes West (Murderdolls, Wednesday 13, Neurotica, Sebastian Bach), and guitarists T.C. Connally (PB/DC, Cult to Follow) and John Valenzuela (PB/DC, Urial, Mortician). That's a line up with decades of experience behind it....I know Don Van Stavern and Jason McMaster have been in Texas metal since the dawn of the 80's!

As far as highlights go, I actually prefer second track "Caesar" to the opener "Dead Can See"...both are fast and thrashy, but the vocals and riffs are more convincing in "Caesar". Much of the album follows the path of these first two songs, but there are some important detours. "Ghost Crushed" has more of a progressive feel to it, with a cool bass solo and some interesting tempo changes, while "Tomb Spawn" has a sound like Black Sabbath on steroids. Throughout the album, we get some small instrumentals like "Grave" and "The Cottage" that break things up a bit. The extreme metal gets very monolithic for me by the end of the disc, but if you're a fan of that approach, you could sure do a lot worse than Evil United.