Evildead will be releasing their new album on May 24th. It's already added to their MA page:
https://www.metal-archives.com/albums/E ... ce/1222592

They have always been one of my favourite C-list thrash metal bands. First two albums are classics and I really liked their reunion album from 2020.

First singles:

The album cover is super cringey.

Cool, I've always liked 'Annihilation of civilization' and must remember to revisit 'United states of anarchy', I remember liking it when it came out but it got lost in the usual flood of releases.
PS: The guy on the second cover looks like Josep Borrell, Catalan/Spanish politician who is now (inexplicably) head of diplomacy of the EU

i liked United States of Anarchy. im noticing on these two songs that the singer seems to really be phoning it in. he was never fantastic, but he at least brought some heat in his delivery. Raising Fresh Hell has zero energy to it, which is crazy given the lyrical subject.

i actually dig both pieces of art on these singles, but the album art is absolutely awful. doing an anti-lockdown thing in 2024? get with the times guys.

hope for a better mastering!

The detail of the sheep head guy's family photos where no one else has a sheep's head is quite funny. Even if you're generous about what message it sends out (government control people with fear, rather than antivaxx or anything) overall it just comes off as extraordinarily dated.

'Raising Fresh Hell' sounds like a parody of 80s metal. The kind of thing you'd see on an episode of Married...with Children.

Embarrassing.

Some bands haven't aged well. "C-list thrash metal" summed up this band for me. It wasn't that I thought they sucked or anything, rather, I just thought they were just super average and there was so many better bands out at the time that I never really got into them.

Not digging this at all. Annihilation of Civilization is a minor classic in my book and I like The Underworld too but both of their comeback albums haven't done anything for me. In fact it annoy's me that United States of Anarchy is their highest rated album on MA, which is a fuckin joke.

The new single 'Subjugated Souls' is so bad that it's almost entertaining.

Ranting about social media in 2024 is as edgy as Family Matters. The vocal delivery is feeble. The album art looks like it was lifted from a tshirt being sold out of a trailer at a Trump rally.

This sucks the big one.

it really is shocking how much weaker the singer has gotten. not like he was ever a powerhouse, but he could do that "atonal thrash shout" thing just fine on every other record. he sounded like himself on the record they came out with a few years ago! every song ive heard from this album sounds like they recorded him rehearsing the lyrics, or like he's recording while trying not to wake anyone up in the house. there's zero enthusiasm or power in his voice.

that's not even talking about the laughable lyrics (guys, no one has managed to pull off an anti-social media song, please stop trying), or the lame af music video. throwing in what looks like AI art and generic "cyber-security hackerz" stock footage because they couldn't think of anything else, with typos in the lyrics!!!! i really don't want to dump on EvilDead like this; im happy to see these bands kicking around still and i like Annihilation of Civilization, but this is truly an embarrassing display.

The second song is pretty good! The first song is pretty MEH.

I've never heard the old stuff... probably ought to!

I gave each single a couple listens, it actually sounds like they are attempting to channel that more nuanced, early 90s thrash sound that has largely been abandoned by most of the post-revival acts, be it the retro-80s stuff spearheaded by Gama Bomb and Lich King, or the chunkier crossover stuff that Power Trip helped usher in during the 2010s. If it weren't for the rough mixing job, these songs would be excellent, but as is they're pretty good and a nice change of pace from what thrash usually ends up sounding like lately. If the rest of the album is like it and there isn't a better mix on it, this will be a slight step down from United States Of Anarachy.

What would you recommend instead?

Literally fucking ANYthing. Hell, go back to singing about nuclear devastation like the 80s again.

Anything is better than making yourself look like an OLD, DECREPIT and OUT OF TOUCH FOSSIL by bitching about social media and other fake enemies you make up in your rapidly deteriorating brain (not you specifically, I'm talking about EvilDead and any other thrash band coming back from years of inactivity just to write shitty songs about the pandemic and social media).

Young people bitch about this same shit too. 80s nuclear devastation is just recycling hippie sentiment of 'omg the world is gonna end because people are greedy'. Sabbath already did that. Yawn. Shit was boring in the 80s too. In a roundabout way, all the heavy metal music about nuclear war serves as an advertisement for the defense industry. From Sabbath to Sabaton. Slayer to 1914. "War is bad but here buy these cool war songs, t-shirts and backpatches".

As far as social media, people live on their phones. I would expect nothing less lyrically.

I mean these thrash bands, old and modern, flip back and forth between WW3 and pizza/beer songs.