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The Sanity Days - Evil Beyond Belief Review

by Matt Hensch

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'Black sheep' albums are generally a terrible depiction of a band's musical journey, even acting on occasion as the catalyst for a total artistic collapse. Onslaught's you-can't-tell-me-what-to-wear phase occurred in 1989, when label execs strong-armed the British thrash battalion to replace the noxious Sy Keeler with Steve Grimmett, the guy from f***ing Grim Reaper. Onslaught, with Grimmett on board, fluffed up their sound and released "In Search of Sanity," an hour-long feat of repetitive thrash metal glazed over melodic vocals and modernized elements. The legacy following "In Search of Sanity" is one most 'black sheep' albums never have the pleasure of achieving: it managed to keep the group's spirit alive despite radical musical shifts, and was actually not too shabby overall. That strange and exiled record had some moments of brilliance, though most of it is now tucked away in Onslaught's attic, perpetually left contemplating its experimental themes while chewing on fish heads.

"In Search of Sanity" could have suffered a far worse fate than it had. Inner turmoil within Onslaught led to drummer Steve Grice leaving the band and reuniting with Steve Grimmett to form what would become The Sanity Days. I think it would have made perfect sense for The Sanity Days to carry on with the spirit of "In Search of Sanity" by making an album geared to sound like the work Grimmett and Grice helped create back in 1989. "Evil Beyond Belief," the first record from this project, doesn't have an iota in common with "In Search of Sanity." In fact, it has nothing to do with the untapped style of Onslaught's odd days. Instead, the routine here runs on basic heavy metal, despite catering to the notion that this is somehow a continuation of "In Search of Sanity" given the band name and the members involved, all of whom once had a stint in Onslaught.

Ripping riffs like those on "Shellshock," adrenaline-pumping choruses, memorable songs teetering on an almost experimental thrash metal cusp-throw them out the window, because they aren't here. What "Evil Beyond Belief" specializes in is diametric to "In Search of Sanity"-other than the inherited repetition factor and the unreasonable running time, of course. The musical base runs on the fuel of mid-paced heavy metal, which is fine, but it is not a direction The Sanity Days does well. An hour's worth of music can be boiled down to taking riffs that would've been fine in the form of a quick bite and funneling them down the listener's mouth for six, seven, eight minutes at a time. I find it disappointing that this isn't geared to resemble "In Search of Sanity" on a musical level; creating that kind of record would probably have at least roused the band from sleepwalking.

Another factor weighing down on this is the lack of stimulating tempos. The drum patterns are time and again slow and lethargic underneath songs that take too long to develop, at day's end rivaling the excitement of washing dishes by hand. Steve Grimmett sounds acceptable, but is noticeably restrained by the vapid musical surrounding in which he finds himself. His performance is stuck in the same rut as the general musical structure found throughout "Evil Beyond Belief": tolerable, yet plagued by nothing interesting going on instrumentally. The one song having any sort of momentum at all is "Firestorm," but its appearance of having energy stems from having been preceded by nine other plodding, monotonous motions which managed to do so little, despite running up ungodly amounts of time.

The point I'm trying to make is "Evil Beyond Belief" and The Sanity Days really have nothing to do with the era of Onslaught upon which this record allegedly received its influence. This, of course, is not a fair reason to write off a whole album, but "Evil Beyond Belief" misses a golden opportunity to explore something fresh and buried by time. The Sanity Days could have gotten away with writing "Shellshock" ten times over or just Xeroxing the "In Search of Sanity" formula, but instead made this hulking, overlong mass of tame heavy metal which I'm sure is less interesting than watching a cow troll around the pasture.

The Sanity Days - Evil Beyond Belief

Rating:4.0

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