By Greg Pratt

Winnipeg, Manitoba: hot bed of traditional metal? I don’t know, that’s a stupid question, but here’s what I do know: EVIL SURVIVES are from Winnipeg. Evil Survives play traditional metal. Evil Survives have a song (and an EP!) called “Judas Priest Live”. Evil Survives are very serious about their old school metal.

For example, when I’m chatting with guitarist Adrian Riff about how awesome and underrated Accept are, I mention I’m not horribly excited about that band’s new disc, even if it does have serious riff-rocking potential. His reply?

“I don’t think I’ve been excited about a record that’s been released since I was born.”

I’m confused and ask if he means an Accept record or any record, any band. He means the latter. I’m no longer confused. I’m just interviewing a dude in a (get ready for it) retro traditional metal band. They say stuff like that. Hey, it’s cool; we’re all thinking it, we’re all feeling it, someone may as well be honest.

Well, we exaggerate (barely), but it is true that what people will find on Powerkiller, the band’s second disc (out now on War On Music Records; it’s the one with the bad-ass Ed Repka cover artwork), is 100% traditional metal. It’s not retro thrash, it’s retro trad metal, which Riff feels is going to be the next trend in metal. And he’s happy to be one of the bands leading the charge,

“We’re pretty content boxing ourselves intentionally into a genre,” he says. “So many bands these days try to play the card of transcending labels and having their own sound. We’re totally the opposite. We’re trying to specifically emulate the sound of British heavy metal from 1979 to 1984.”

Wow. The intense precision of this vision is on par with the conviction usually found in black metal murderers and metalcore puzzle piecers. But it sounds like Riff and his bandmates have to have such intensity in their vision to keep that other fashionable retro metal sound from creeping in.

“I’m a thrash fiend,” he admits. “I’m a huge fan of Canadian thrash. Sacrifice is one of my all-time favourites. It’s a huge influence on our music. We have to really really try not to be a thrash band. We have to do everything in our power to not be a thrash band.”

On Powerkiller, the threat of thrash lingers over the listener, cobwebs falling off of its denim jacket, middle finger raised (with thumb!), making jokes about how this is wimpy Shadow Kingdom Records stuff and could stand to grow some balls. But that’s thrash for ya. Bully. Just like we love Shadow Kingdom Records around these parts, we like Powerkiller.

“It’s the logical second album,” says Riff. “We didn’t really diverge in any meaningful sense from our sound. But I’m told from people it’s a little bit more Evil Survives and a little bit less explicitly Iron Maiden. But just a touch. The first album we recorded after our line-up being together for only three or four months, so this one we were a little bit more in our own groove. But at the same time it is still explicitly Iron Maiden revival; it’s definitely NWOBHM worship.”

I’ll see that and raise Riff one by saying that it’s actually straight-up metal worship, plain and simple. Because as goofy as some of this stuff seems, in the end, it’s serious, man; the music is serious, the musicians are serious, it’s just that the delivery is fun, because, well, when you’re self-professed “metal nerds” playing retro trad metal, what else can it be?

“We know metal is a little bit cheesy and it’s not the most serious music from that perspective,” says Riff. “The image part of it’s a little bit cheesy and we accept that. It’s a bunch of guys in tight pants wailing away.”

For more info visit Myspace.com/evilsurvives.