ON EVIL DAYS

"On Evil Days" is the debut full-length studio album by multi-national metal act Liquid Graveyard. The album was released through My Kingdom Music in October 2009. Liquid Graveyard was formed in 2006 by married couple John Walker (Cancer, Absolute Power) and Raquel Walker (Ab'fs). John performs the guitars and Raquel performs the vocals on the album. the bass is performed by Adrian de Buitl'ar and the drums are performed by Acaymo Delgado. Liquid Graveyard was born after the second split-up of Cancer.

Stylistically the music on "On Evil Days" is a mix of death metal, thrash/groove metal, progressive metal, and avant-garde metal. Walker sings both snarling blackened extreme metal vocals but also clean vocals. While some riffs are recognisable as riffs which could have been included on a Cancer album, Liquid Graveyard are a different kind of beast to Walker's more well known other band. This is music which is very hard to describe correctly because of the many different musical elements used and combined. It's certainly a both creative and unconventional sounding release that's for sure...

When the songs are dominated by Walker's clean vocals (like on "Criministers"), I'm sometimes reminded of the Norwegians in Matter Mortem, but that's not the case at all when she screams and snarls her blackened vocals at the listener. The band are well playing and Walker is a skilled vocalist and paired with the powerful, detailed, and well sounding production job, "On Evil Days" is definitely both a well performed and well produced release. For all the adventurous ideas and creative songwriting, it's the songs which lack something to elevate "On Evil Days" to a higher plane. So upon conclusion it's a good quality release but it seldom reaches excellence and therefore a 3 star (60%) rating is warranted.

(Originally posted on Metal Music Archives).