RSS Feed


FAST EVIL
The Midnight Force

Classic Metal (2018)
Rating: 8/10

The latest speed metal riot to emerge from South America is Fast Evil. This Brazilian speed metal clan has only been around for two years, and already they are laying waste to their territory by delivering this quintessentially 80s assault.

Beginning in wonderfully atmospheric – like some 80s sci-fi horror soundtrack, in fact – The Midnight Force reeks of naivety and excitable flair. The sloppy cover art and the band fully armoured just takes one back to the early South American underground thrash / death scene.

However, what I love about this vibrant and nifty creation is the band’s ability to write good, catchy songs, which is immediately apparent on the anthemic gallop of ‘Hellboss’. From its enthusiastic vocal slurs, its killer solo exploits and that infectious melody, we have an immediate winner when it comes to Exciter-inspired, balls to the wall metallic savagery.

Fast Evil, consisting of vocalist Lucas Mesquita, guitarist Diego Dourado, bassist Marcos Andrade and drummer Luis Neto, know how to ply us with fiery speedballs. Sincere Molotov cocktails at times boast a feminine flair to the vocal wails, particularly on the metallic hellfire of the snappy ‘Japanese Killer’ which ups the New Wave Of British Heavy Metal design ante and taints it with thrashing vitality. Indeed, everything about this gem of a record harkens back to a mid-to-late 80s aggression, but the instrumentation remains tight even when the clan starts its pacey tirades.

The album rattles along like some well-oiled freight train and summed up by such blazing compositions as ‘Hell Angel’ with its Judas Priest-like bedazzling, especially in the killer axe work. Meanwhile, ‘Evil Maniacs’ and ‘Living At The Speed’ bring further comparisons to Canadian metalheads Exciter. Each and every song is delivered with zip and zing; the dynamism of the drums to the nothing fancy yet effective bass trundles are admirable, but the sizzle created by the guitar and vocal just takes this opus to new levels of metallic mayhem.

The title track is a punch of hot, scolding air as Lucas Mesquita’s vocals shatter the eardrums with tidy wails, and when he screams “Metal is back” on… er… ‘Metal Is Back’ one can only rage along with such tides of enthusiasm and frenzy – just check out the scorching solo and manic percussive rambles. Oddly though, by this point Mesquita’s wails have become a rather blunted, reaching howl. Whether this is simply down to his variety as a vocalist or the fact that he genuinely had a throat issue, I don’t know, but it all adds to the almost youthful charm of this album.

The work is rounded off by the stormy escapades of the grumbling ‘Ritual Of Sacrifice’, which has an early Mordred-esque groove about its structure. On this track Mesquita displays soul in his vocal as well as maturity as the band digs deep to compose a steady, traditional rhythm and again we’re submitted to another brilliant solo from Diego Dourado.

Fast Evil supplies the listener with so many ingredients that only a corpse would not be entertained by such notions, The Midnight Force being a boisterous little album straight from the misty annals of speed-cum-traditional metal.

Neil Arnold

<< Back to Album & EP Reviews



Related Posts via Categories
Share