Metal Underground.com

Neverdie is a metal band from the eastern coast of Canada. Their second EP “Phase 2: Revolution” offers promise, but not without problems, as Neverdie plays a very diverse and eclectic brand of metal. The EP is only five songs long, and within these five songs almost every popular metal or hard rock band is aped. This is both the EP’s strength and weakness.

The first song, “Transcendancy,” starts with a noodling heavy guitar line, and works its way into a mid-tempo riff. Slightly menacing, slight uplifting, the song sounds like a Disturbed instrumental. “My Army” is a metalcore-styled song, with guitar leads on top of the mix throughout and guttural vocals. The bridge sections, however, are System of a Down rip-offs. The vocals, chunky and dissonant chords, and lyrics are all very similar to SOAD’s style. As the song progresses it gets to be more consistently closer to the SOAD style and less of a standard metalcore song.

“Carnal Rage” has a death metal vibe again at the beginning, but ends up sounding like Breaking Benjamin, with some System of a Down thrown in for good measure. “Prevalent Souls” is the only track that tries to break away from the standard operating procedure, but even it sounds like Eddie Vedder and Sully got in a room and wrote an acoustic piece.

What does this all mean? Is Neverdie doomed to imitation hell for their careers? Certainly not, as their ability to cover so many styles of hard rock and heavy metal is impressive. They have a wide range of musical themes and ideas to draw from. The challenge for them now is to mix all these elements together into songs that draw on their varied influences without directly imitating them.

The production on the album is bad and the playing could be tighter. Neverdie seems bent on stressing their focus on positive lyrics and messages, which is commendable. Even with all of that layered onto the imitations of other bands, Neverdie’s potential is still easily heard. If they can solve their problems and focus on writing unique music that plays to their talent and abilities, they may have something.