United Evil Forces
(Vic Records)
51:46min
They say music bring memories… and it’s is completely true! I remember this Belgium band’s debut album being around at the only Metal gathering place we had back then, and although everybody liked the cover, it was gathering dust in there as nobody really wanted to add it to their collection. Well, this compilation, just re-released by the fine folks at Vic Records, gathers their demos from 1985 and 1987 along with some live songs from 1987. By just looking at the name of the band, the year it was released and the cover art and titles you might have an ideas what kind of noise yup unsuspecting soul is about to be exposed. This is evil, satanic Metal of the crudest kind, done by then some teenagers, trying to emulate their heroes which are early incarnations of SLAYER, VENOM, METALLICA, KREATOR and so on. Obviously the production is demo quality, but not that bad for the time, and of corpse with many execution details, yet their true intention and spirit is there. Yes, this is Thrash Metal that borders on Black Metal and primitive Death Metal. More than once I find myself thinking that they didn’t give a damn stealing riffs from “Show No Mercy” or “Pleasure To Kill”, but again back in the day that was more than accepted as hearing familiar riffs makes a new band more easily accepted. Yeah, it sounds weird, but for the pre-cell phone Metallers it will totally make sense. Their debut album (also recently re-released) was published on a small label, and suffered from poor distribution, so the band ultimately faded into obscurity, which was a shame, as to me they had a lot of potential to enter the same league as SODOM. The live songs, as you can now imagine, are the kind of trade tapes floating around in the ’80s and with poor sound. For me at least, these live recordings don’t make any sense, especially if they sound bad, but there you go. This is an historical document and for those like me that relate memories to music, an interesting one. www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100063485232579
Julián “Kill The Priest” Núñez