DELIVER US FROM EVIL AREN’T CHRISTIAN, ARE F*CKING SICK
It takes balls for five white dudes from Indiana to name their EP after a Maya Angelou poem. But I’ve been enjoying Deliver Us From Evil‘s Still I Rise EP so much, they could have just as well called it The Autobiography of Malcolm X and it wouldn’t have bothered me that much.
Whether you realize it or not, you’re probably already familiar with the band’s drummer, Alex Morgan; he’s a talented and successful photographer who has worked with Gojira and Daath, amongst others. (Check out his work at his official website, or with this MS post or this MS post, or just look about an inch up on this post.) Which makes it all the more baffling to me that Deliver Us From Evil are unsigned; they’re like eight million times better than half the bands publicists and label reps send us every day.
And, despite what their name or the name of their EP might suggest, they’re not a Christian ‘core band. (Although their 2008 full-length was called Beyond a Pale Horse, so the band should probably call their next album Hail Satan or something obvious like that to ensure that there’s no further confusion.) They wouldn’t seem out of place on a tour with the aforementioned Daath, or Lazarus A.D., or some NWOAHM bands – basically, they’ve ingested a whole lotta the heavier side of thrash, groove, melodeath, and probably some anthemic arena rock, and now spit it back out as something, well, kick-ass. Still I Rise is just three songs long, coming in at under eleven and a half minutes of music, so I’ve already listened to it like eighty trillion times. It’s easy to leave that fucker on repeat and just completely lose track of time as you induce whiplash from too much head banging.
The band apparently have plans to make a video for one of the tracks off Still I Rise in the not-too-distant future; in the meantime, you can check out some of their music here, and order Still I Rise, Beyond a Pale Horse, and DUFE merch here. (And it’s worth mentioning that some of the band’s merch is pretty sweet – and if you buy it now, you’ll be able to claim you’re sick of these dudes by the time they get really big, like a really tr00 cooler-than-thou and in-the-know snob!) Here’s the Mitch Massie-directed video for “Only Ashes Remain,” from Pale Horse – which is a good album, by the way, and totally worth checking out, too. But I think Still I Rise represents the next phase in the band’s evolution.
-AR
