President Evil
Hell in a Box
Rating
Style: Thrash’n’Roll
Release date: January 25th 2008
 

President Evil is from Bremen in Germany, and Hell In A Box is their second full length album.

 

This sounds by the first listen like some nice kickass thrashy rock’n’roll/stoner-metal. Most of the time these guys sprint forward in a very high gear with touches/inspiration from a lot of “dirty metal” bands like Motorhead or Kyuss and even some industrial like Ministry.

 

But….even though I like the Stoner/dirty metal style, the tracks on this album generally sound too much alike to keep my undivided attention for more than a few tracks; then it becomes a background stream of hammering away (and on some tracks the snare drum sound furthermore is a really annoying “dak-dak” sound that cuts through everything), with a few positive wake-up-calls when they start a cool riff or groove, and they do have some quite cool riffs. And although singer Johnny Holze really screams his guts out, also the singing becomes too unvaried, pretty much the same all the way through.

 

This is the same problem I had with their first album “The Thrash’n’roll Asshole Show”, the energy and the sound is right for me, but there’s no real stand out songs, and it seems, that when they speed things up they only have one kind of blueprint for a song. From my point of view they lack something in the composing department, to make it interesting to listen to the whole album.

 

This is not a bad album, but for me it’s just not enough to blend some styles together and then set full force ahead – this is something that has been heard before, with a slight twist that isn’t enough to make it really interesting in the long run. With some more variety this could become an interesting band.

 

I’m sure P.E. is a hefty and entertaining live band, so go check them out if they come to a town near you. They were on a European tour with our Danish metalrollers Volbeat lately.

 

Recommended tracks: White Fire and One Brain Army.


Tracklist
01. Viva La Muerta
02. Jesus Factor Negative
03. Hell in a Box
04. White Fire
05. King Asshole
06. The Anti Loser
07. Bring Out Your Dead
08. The Return of the Speed Cowboys
09. Godforsaken
10. One Brain Army
11. New Junk City
Label: AFM Records
Distribution: Target (Denmark)
Reviewed by: Claus Melsen
Date: April 7th 2008
Website: www.presidentevil.de