AGE OF EVIL

You know how every once in a while you come across an album that blows you away on the basis of pure musicianship and superior songwriting and then you realize that the membership is made up of a bunch of teenagers and you end up being even more impressed? "Get Dead" is not that album and AGE OF EVIL is not that band. Sound harsh? It's really not as bad as it seems. It just means that "Get Dead" is a mediocre album played by two sets of brothers ranging in age from 18 to 20 whose songwriting capabilities haven't caught up with playing abilities that are much better than average and probably getting better all the time.

Released in Europe on Evil Eye Entertainment and self-released in North America, "Get Dead" is a six-song EP consisting of two original studio recordings, two covers, and three original live cuts, all of which are played in a style that is best described as straddling the line between thrash and traditional metal. In fact, the title track is more like thrash metal ANNIHILATOR style with a pinch of MEGADETH and aside from rhythm guitarist Jeremy Goldberg's nasally/whiny vocal tone and middling patterns (points of annoyance throughout the album),this is some tough stuff and the one track that really speaks to the boys' upside potential. "Cruel Intentions" succeeds for some impressive shredding, an attribute that is fairly constant across the album, but bogs down a smidge due to borderline limp melodies and vocal patterns. The story is similar on the live tracks, "Glimpse of Light", which is generally solid, but goes spiraling down the crapper during an irksome mellow passage, and "Eye for an Eye" during which pedestrian melody hurts an otherwise stout delivery. By the way, I'm sure it seemed funny at the time to pump in festival-level crowd noise and shout clichés like "Scream for me", but when the songwriting is struggling, attempts at comedy just don't seem very funny. As for the covers of SKID ROW's "Slave to the Grind" and JUDAS PRIEST's immaculately classic "The Hellion/Electric Eye", there is nothing about which to bitch, as both are well played and in the case of the latter one can hear where the band is getting a good sized portion of its influence. But they're covers, so there is little in the way of options for giving a shit.

To sum up then, "Get Dead" falls right smack dab in the middle of mediocre, mainly because the songwriting is just south of noteworthy. But hey, the guys have plenty of time to up their game to the point where the good far outweighs the bad instead of running neck and neck with it.