Toxic Grace

So, as anyone among the three or four people who consistently read my reviews can attest, I have an open relationship with originality in modern albums. I'm a sucker for it and I consider it a necessary quality to elevate all my favourite LPs to excellence. But it's also true that I've rarely bashed a release only for lacking originality – one can tread the same ground for the 1724th time and still receive a pat on the back from me, if they at least sound passionate about doing so and convey the same enthusiasm to the listener. Differences can be deep. As a quick comparison, Foreseen is an egregious example of a band that rejected any possible trace of innovations, and still released a monstruous ripper of an album with Untamed Force, while on the other hand we can find something like Extinct's Incitement of Violence that is more like the sound of a band that tried to take as much as possible from a well-established national scene, without however having the chops to provide a plausible alternative to the old classics. In terms of quality, the results couldn't be further than they are. This whole preamble was more or less mandatory to explain why cult Cali thrashers Evildead's second full-length after reformation, Toxic Grace, is a trainwreck on basically all fronts.

Unlike the aforementioned bands, we are talking about old guards trying to show they still have what it takes to stay relevant. The thought process might be different, but the end result can have the same variance. Kreator want you to know they aren't actually interested in writing another Pleasure to Kill in the slightest. Morbid Saint wish they could write another Spectrum of Death, but reckon they can't and offer a strong return to the scenes nonetheless. Razor would love to write another Shotgun Justice, and even borrow a bit from it when you aren't looking their way, but still end up making a decent impression. Evildead, by contrast, try so hard to write another Annihilation of Civilization that they fall flat on their faces, with the burden of the three and a half decades that have passed since then weighing on their backs, and crushing them to suffocation. It's worth noting that their '89 debut wasn't even comparable with the other LPs I named, but it was still a strong B-tier album with enough energy to power your own stereo while it was playing. 'F.C.I. / The Awakening' has been in my personal pantheon of thrash metal openers since forever, and at this point in my life I'm starting to suspect it will never lose its seat. 'Gone Shooting' and 'Living Good' are other tracks I'd recommend to literally anyone starting out on the old-school thrash metal subject. In any case, it was clearly the work of young people, talented as hell obviously, but still relying on tons of juvenile energy to make up for its scarce novelty. Recreating that once you've hit middle age? Man, if that isn't a recipe for disaster, I don't know what to think.

I get it, they weren't content with being a one-album wonder, but even the oft-forgotten sophomore The Underworld, while not great, is the auditory equivalent of Mental Vortex compared to this. United States of Anarchy, lame-ass title aside, was a solid and respectable comeback effort from a still rusty band. You'd expect me to say that this isn't that different from United States of Anarchy, and I initially thought so as well. What in the hell could have changed in the mere span of four years, after all? But no, the two albums are like night and day so much it's not even funny. The individual performances aren't a good look already, for starters. Albert Gonzales and Juan Garcia couldn't sound further from the times when they were the driving forces behind Agent Steel, Abattoir, Anger as Art, and probably some bands whose names begin with other letters as well. While solos are nothing to write home about but not too shabby either, the riffs, save for a few selected exceptions (more on that later), are the real letdown, being often bland, when not flat-out ugly, and too slow for their own good. While we're on the subject of average rpms, neither Rob Alaniz is the powerhouse drummer of the old days anymore. What was, at least in my opinion, one of the many instantly recognizable features of Annihilation of Civilization is now completely indistinguishable from any other youngster behind their kit, or even a well-produced drum machine.

Not helping matters is Phil Flores' completely shot voice. I can leave it as that and not give any further details, but not out of laziness – it's just hard (and, in a way, painful) to describe. He is totally anonymous, declamating the lyrics without the slightest ounce of grit or conviction. To be fair, this isn't a huge difference from the previous opus, where it was already clear he'd seen his best days pass before him, but he still sounds worse somehow, and of course gone is the tremendously effective attitude he oozed during the glorious years. That also makes said lyrics completely decipherable, of course. That wouldn't be a problem if... God, these lyrics. Okay, Evildead were never known for being the best lyricists of the scene even back then, and some confrontational moments wouldn't be an absolute novelty either (remember 'Critic / Cynic' or 'Unauthorized Exploitation'?). Neither excuse is enough of an alibi for some of the lines I was forced to endure. You've got your conspirationist crap complete with references to 'drinking Kool-Aid' and good ol' COVID masks in 'Fear Porn' (uh?), you've got the corny ode to themselves in 'Raising Fresh Hell' that clashes with the lethargic average tempo and Flores' completely disinterested delivery, making it both a discouraging advertisement for the band as a whole and a fitting showcase of what little they have to offer nowadays – but, believe it or not, we didn't even touch upon the cream of the crop yet.

Indeed, for something that truly deserves its own paragraph, and it doesn't matter that I've yet to find anything that confirms it and I likely never will, 'Subjugated Souls' has to be a joke. An invective against the generation Z after which, I promise, you'll struggle not to think 'ok boomer' as a knee-jerk reflex, climaxing in one of the most terrible refrains ever unleashed upon the unsuspecting listener, you cannot expect me to hear 'Just another hashtag, just another screen/Just another follower, just another meme' and not die of second-hand embarrassment. I would note that this is the kind of schtick that inevitably anchors the song to the current time frame and would render it inevitably dated, should one listen to it in, say, 10 years, but do you really think anyone will remember this in 10 days, even? Granted, for such a tirade against young people and their 'memes', I'd literally sell one of my kidneys to see this song become a meme itself in metal circles. One can only dream.

All this dreadful talking, and we didn't even touch upon individual songs... although that's likely because there isn't much else to add. I'd have gladly overlooked the goofy lyrics if the music was actually decent. But no. Not only are the songs as inane as previously dissected, they're also so dull they exceeded all my expectations, only in reverse. Despite what hinted at the beginning, Toxic Grace isn't always at full throttle, quite the opposite instead. Reportedly featuring influences from disparate sources such as doom and traditional heavy metal, the only thing I'm hearing is a tired group of tired grown men tiredly going through the motions. Even when they try to fire it up, they sound the furthest from menacing, or simply... fast? And without bringing up Annihilation of Civilization for a comparison yet again, already 'Blasphemy Divine' or 'The Descending', among their more recent material, felt way more alive than this uninspired, plodding stuff. And forgive me if I'm expecting a band to sound similar to four, not forty, goddamn years ago, would you?

I narrowed the only half-decent moments down to a mere three, like the verse riff in 'Reverie' and perhaps the harmonic progression in 'Subjugated Souls', or even the chorus of 'Fear Porn' (pretty much the only song worth more than a listen, even though it's still something any above average band could have written), and yet they can't quite sweeten the pill when stacked up against lazy cuts like opener 'Fuck Around and Find Out' (yeah, they hate memes so much they used one as a song title. I swear, this stuff transcends mortal logic) and utterly incompetent stuff such as the artificial and ill-fitting outbursts on 'Stupid on Parade', or the tiresome pseudo-doom experiments 'Bathe in Fire' and 'Poetic Omen', tragically placed one after the other, where Flores uses all kinds of effects to cover up the fact that he's basically speaking over the music. The latter could be considered on par with the latest (and, hopefully, last) Arghoslent in terms of taking an already unsuccessful guitar line and running it into the ground until physical sickness is guaranteed, and is also notable for its fade-out ending appearing at what seems to be a completely random point. Also worth mentioning is the commendable effort spent on butchering one of my favourite Killing Joke songs ever ('The Death & Resurrection Show') with the bonus track. The less said about that, the better. [R.I.P. Geordie Walker.]

In a world where, believe it or not, tons of great thrash albums are still released every year, choosing to ignore them in favour of shoddy exhibits of shark jumping like this one, for the only reason that it bears a name that meant something almost 40 years earlier, is something I have no sympathy for. It's not even a case of me claiming to be the only enlightened individual seeing the actual truth, as much as it's likely to be the fate of the self-proclaimed 'true' fans – again, not that I'm gonna feel sad for them, whatever floats their boat. But you can slap an average modern logo on that abomination of an artwork and you'll get an album that nobody would even notice upon release, let alone praise it. Add to it the fact that an entitled band is genuinely convinced that it's amazing and will literally attack you if you think otherwise, and the situation turns depressing. Yeah, I had originally planned to wrap the whole thing up by saying that the saddest aspect about the whole matter is probably Alaniz going after every single user criticizing the advance singles on YouTube, but after some thinking, the umpteenth elderly musicians living in their '80s concert flyers-covered echo chambers along with whom they call 'real' fans isn't great news after all.

Indeed: that saddest aspect is Toxic Grace itself. No doubt about it. Recommended only if you have a really twisted and self-deprecating sense of humour.