Evereve
.enetics: 11 orgies of massenjoyment on the dark side of the planet (Massacre)
~reviewed by Uncle Nemesis
Oh dear. I smell a concept. The baffling title of this album suggests that someone, somewhere, has given birth to a Big Idea. The press release adds several more layers of high falutin' confusion:
' "How much is possible? How much freedom do we have?" is singer and lyricist MZ Eve 51 asking. He is twisting, turning visualizing the thoughts he is playing with, driven and curious. To what degree is a decision self-supportive and what has genetic heritage got to do with it? .enetics, genetics, evereve - exactly!'That, believe it or not, is the most comprehensible paragraph from a press release which reads like it's been freely translated from Martian. And yes, I'm afraid the lead singer of this band really does call himself MZ Eve 51, a name which makes him sound like a East German motorbike. Other band members have similarly 'crazy' names. Give it up one time, please, for T.he H.avoc W.reaker on guitar, 0-IQ on bass (hey, you said it, matey), MC W1febeater on drums (oh, how we laughed at *that* one) and SK Kiefer Durden, also on guitar. I feel rather sorry for poor old SK Keifer Durden. Why hasn't he been allowed to play the funny-name game, like the other boys in the band? Perhaps he can't think of one. Allow me to assist: I suggest Sill E. TosSeR. That, I think, would fit in rather neatly with the general theme.
Evereve are a metal outfit from Germany.
There they stand in their publicity photograph, all supercool haircuts
and hard stares. They look as camp as a Scout jamboree, but 
something
tells me that wasn't the intention. There's no irony or humour or sense
of absurdity here. They *mean* it. Hard men, making hard music. Do they
succeed? Well, up to a point. I found the album hard to listen to, at any
rate.
I have no quibble with the production. I innocently tried to listen to the album on headphones, and when the guitar on the opening track, 'This Heart' came in, the top of my head almost came off. The sound is big, bad, and LOUD. When I put it through my speakers, I found myself pinned to the opposite wall, hair standing on end, drool leaking from the corner of my slack jaw. Evereve's sound attacks the listener like shockwaves from a bunker-buster. I almost expected to look up and see a black spaceship crashing into the sun. Even the obligatory mawkish power-ballads, such as 'The More She Knows', come crashing in on riffs like tsunamis, all power and not much ballad. 'Her Last Summer' is fairly typical: giant squalls of metal mayhem interspersed with 'sensitive' interludes - during which you just know that the singer is gazing upwards with that agonised, clenched-jaw expression metal vocalists always adopt when they're trying to do 'sincere'.
For all Evereve's down-with-the-kids image, their music is actually very traditional. Old metal, rather than nu. Sometimes, they thrash it up a bit, but at other times it's almost AOR. Even the fastest, loudest, baddest songs sound like mid-80s hair-metal which has been hastily roughed-up a bit for the nu-metal market. If Evereve did a cover, I'm willing to bet it would be something like 'I Surrender' by Rainbow. They may wear hair extensions and New Rock boots in their publicity pix, but deep down inside I bet they're all poodle perms and white trainers. Their song titles give the game away - very traditional-sounding love song titles like 'December Wounds', 'Along Comes A Fool', and 'One More Day'. If you told me those were songs from an old Whitesnake album, I'd believe you. Even 'X-istence (I'm Free)" looks as if someone from marketing has got alongside the band and told them, 'Guys, you know your song 'Existence'? Why not spell it with an X? That'll make you look kinda rad 'n' kewl, and then we'll be able to sell you to the Slipknot kiddies!'
So. Polished, professional, and image-consulted to the max, Evereve look as contemporary as all get out, but I think it's a thin veneer over aband who are older and more traditional than the marketing guys at their record company would like us to believe. And the concept? I never did get to the bottom of that. If the songs relate to it in any way, it all went over my head. Most of Evereve's stuff seems to reside in the 'My woman's done gone left me an' I gotta make it on through the night, yeah' zone. Very trad.
Don't be fooled by the way they're all tarted up like Zeromancer in the photo. This band has more in common with Gillan. And, in 2003, that thought is far more frightening than any grand concept could ever be.
The tunestack:
This Heart
The More She Knows
Abraza la Luz (Embrace the Light)
Her Last Summer
Silver God
X-istence (I'm Free)
December Wounds
Along Comes A Fool
One More Day
Eat-Grow-Decay
1951
The players:
MZ Eve 51: Vocals, keyboards
T.he H.avoc W.reaker: guitars
Sill E. TosSeR: guitars
0-IQ: bass
MC W1febeater: drums
The website: http://www.evereve.net
Reviewed by Uncle Nemesis: http://www.nemesis.to
05/10/03