On their debut album, Finnish melodic death/groovy thrashers Evil Drive play it safe, very safe, painfully safe. While there is clearly a level of skill and a great band chemistry happening here to play these songs together so tightly (some of the machine-gun grooves are definitely admirable, if not draining), you just kinda shrug your shoulders at the end result and wonder who really listens to this stuff. It's nowhere near thrashy enough to satisfy anyone looking for thrash, and it's way too mellow to scratch a death metal itch. Kinda like the last dozen or so Arch Enemy records, you just sit there and get pummelled by the whatever-ness of it all, then mumble to yourself, “No, really: who is buying this stuff?” Of course, Arch Enemy sell way more pancakes than any of the bestial death metal bands I've been touting over the past two years as being the next great hopes of underground metal, so maybe this band's easy grooves and predictable delivery will be the next big thing in metal. 

I mean, there's decent moments to be found: check out the solo section in “The Land Of The Dead”, for example. I can't blame this band for staying so firmly planted in melodic death-lite here, as they do it skillfully and with class (see “Iron Rain”, a very cool deep cut that does Arch Enemy just as well as that band has since their second album). But as solid and well-played as this is, there's zero personality, and, the main issue here: it packs about as much punch as any Arch Enemy album from the past decade does, which is barely any at all, the delivery nowhere near as satisfying as the concept would have us all believe.