Enemy Reign

Means To A Dead End

Self Financed 2009

Denver's grind/death/thrash....errrr.....extreme metallers, Enemy Reign hit the streets hard with their debut five song EP.  Opener Command blasts right out of the gate with a suicidal intensity and a vicious onslaught of death and grind rhythms and hyper-speed drums which soon settle into a bouncy thrash groove.  After dragging myself out of the mosh-pit I hear a Slayer-esque guitar solo streaks across the song like tracer rounds arcing across the night sky.  Isolate begins with a melodic thrash riff on top of a grind beat.  Towards the end of the song we see the material drift predictably towards a metalcore breakdown.  The title-track features some Morbid Angel-esque rhythmic grooves copulating with spastic grind bursts and techno -death guitar harmonics.  Bass heavy mid-tempo thrash rises out of the center of Throw Myself to the Wolves while a sea of churning confident death metal raises a metallic fist and punches the listener in the gut.  Sped up Morbid Angel riffing surges to form the core of Abuse with tons of double bass and chunky guitars.  A catchy meldoy and some technical drumming kick out the door like a battering ram towards the 2:45 mark of the song.  Enemy Reign's vocals are diverse as they range from a shout, to a shrieks, to deep, ultra guttural death metal vocals.  Though trying to convince they refuse to be pigeon-holed, Enemy Reign sticks mostly to the speedy death and grinding blasts, infusing just a modicum of thrash and hardcore/metalcore.  Means to A Dead End is nothing too mindblowing but is strongly performed material which shows these newbies are going to be a force to be reckoned with.