CONVULSE
Evil Prevails
(Svart Records)
37:43min

When I heard about the resuscitation of Finnish cult commando CONVULSE – whose massive debut album “World Without God” remains a classic of the country’s incredible output of dark, often doomy yet also constantly quite brutal Death Metal – a wave of nostalgia-driven excitement rushed over me like a flood of warm blood. However, as competent and organic “Evil Prevails” sounds as conventional and somewhat pale it appears in a day and age where we have incredible “comeback” albums such as “Macabre Eternal” or “Death… The Brutal Way” and on the other hand crushing first full-lengths by younger acts like ALTARS, BEYOND, MORBUS CHRON, SONNE ADAM or even acts comprised of scene veterans like DISMA or VALLENFYRE. The competition and quality out there is simply immense! Nonetheless, the straight-forward Death Metal on “Evil Prevails” has its moments with the unfortunately otherwise rare chorus of the title-track, the sinister Black Metal kinda chords during the quicker sections of ‘Days Are Dark’ or the moody guitar passages strewn throughout the album, which add a certain atmospheric element despite feeling a bit too OPETH-ian for me and slightly out of place in my definition of what CONVULSE should ideally sound like. Furthermore, a bit like John McEntee – as much as I respect and personally like this dude – Rami Jämsä’s vocals sound a bit forced and less powerful than the guttural excellence shown on the debut, just like John can’t create the same gurgling impact as Mr. Pillard did in his prime. While CONVULSE remained faithful to their roots, “Evil Prevails” is a tad too unspectacular to fulfill the expectations I had for their rightly much anticipated resurrection, and leaves me with the wish to love it just for nostalgia’s sake, but I can’t. I can only stare on the sheer fabulous striking cover artwork by Luxi Lahtinen and feel a bit sad… Nah, come on, heads up old boy, maybe the next attack of CONVULSE will be stronger, after all “Deathhammer” was better than “Death… The Brutal Way”, too. More band information at www.facebook.com/convulse. Hear a song: https://soundcloud.com/svart-records/unholy-war. Order if you think my opinion is crap: www.svartrecords.com

Stefan Franke

Stefan Franke

Related reviews / interviews:
CONVULSE - Cycle Of Revenge (Carsten Lomme)
CONVULSE - World Without God (Mindaugas "Plix" Lapinskas)
CONVULSE - Inner Evil (Hacker)
CONVULSE - Interview (Steven Willems)

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