Encyclopedia of Evil

Bewitched put out a few albums that I think were pretty good Black Thrash Metal. Some people might say they sound a bit choppy or sloppy at times. Personally I think they are at their best musically when playing faster paced songs. The songs I like most on this album are Sacrifice, Come To The Sabbath, and Hellcult(Live).

Prologue, I happen to like this short lead in. It reminds me of the intro on King Diamond House of God a bit. Starts off slow with some distorted talking, eventually fading into the starting Venom cover song rather well.

Warhead sounds all right till the ill fated attempts at grunting and growling. Though I have heard worse tries to get the Cronos scream. I don't really like the screams on this or the vocals much. They just don't sound totally quite right in every spot of the song. The music isn't bad on this song actually, even if at times the guitar or something seems kinda off. There are moments where the singing does sound good to me though. All elements factored in and considered its a pretty decent version/cover of Warhead.

Sacrifice, this is a well done version of the Bathory song. The music on it sounds pretty good and accurate to me. Perhaps the pace is a tad faster on the cover version of song though. The vocals are all right, not quite the original but decent. I think the singing here is consistently better than on Warhead. To me their Bathory cover sounds much better than the Venom cover on this album. It would of been nice to of heard them do another Bathory song as well.

Evil is a pretty good Mercyful Fate song the original. The vocals on here make no real try to get into King Diamond land. So if you wanna hear a more Black Metal vocal sounding version of this song. Then you probably will wanna check this out. The music sounds pretty good to me, the vocals don't bother me really. The original vocals to me are much better on this song though to be honest. All things considered though not a bad cover version of the song. Only a few sounds and other parts of this version bother me a bit. I think the musical work is a bit better on the Mercyful Fate version as well. Especially noticeable on the guitar parts. Though the effort here isn't bad or anything like that. For most part its a rather good to decent cover with some differences. I think Black Masses or Nuns Have No Fun would of fit the strengths of Bewitched much better than Evil did.

The Circle of The Tyrants is a song thats been covered so many times. I guess Bewitched wanted to include their version among the masses. I remember Obituary had a decent cover of this song on their Cause of Death album. Needless to say the Celtic Frost original version blows this one like many of the other cover versions out of the water. I wish they picked a Celtic Frost song thats not been covered as much, instead of this one though. Still its not a bad version, I can't say its been brutally butchered or anything. I am not so crazy about the main vocals on it though. Yet they mixed in some of the noises and echoes like original rather well to their credit. Enslaved has a nice version of Procreation of the Wicked for any who like Celtic Frost cover songs.

Come to the Sabbath(Black Widow) I like how this song starts out. I think its got a rather cool beat and feeling to it. Drumming at beginning makes me think of an Indian War Party preparing for battle. Also pretty cool they credit and do Black Widow version not Mercyful Fate. As scary as it might sound this is an upbeat old skool sounding song with some fun parts to it. Not quite Mucky Pup meets Black Metal but has a sort of Sarcastic Happy Feel to it. I like how the vocals were done on this song most out of all the cover songs.

Hellcult, this is a pretty good live version of song in my view. I like how Bewitched waited till end of album to toss on this song. Another nice touch was starting out with their Prologue and taking that into the cover songs. This is a pretty good song that seems to mix Thrash with Black Metalish feel at times. Great beat and flow to this entire song. Even the beginning of the song, way it starts quiet then gets heavy is done well. The singing style fits the speed and type of music of this song perfect in my view.

This CD is a bit over 25 minutes so a better value time wise than the Marduk(Glorification) MCD. Seems Osmose put out several mini CDs with old skool cover songs and some originals from their bands. All released around the same time and year. This is a talented band and none of the cover versions sound like some 16 year old kids. One thing I have to be honest about concerning this band is they sound like Pros. Not saying they are the Best at instruments they play, but clearly the group is talented and capable. To me they sound a lot better than many bands that I have heard. Especially when it comes to doing cover versions of older(Legendary) bands. This group seems to be at their best when playing at a faster pace in general. The best sounding song of the cover versions is probably Sacrifice. Seems to of fit the bands style and strengths better than Evil thats for sure.

Basically if you wanna hear this band I would get their Diabolical Desecration album as a starting point. I gave this an 83 because all the cover songs are done decent or sound good. I can't honestly say any of the songs on here sound really horrible. If they had selected a different Mercyful Fate and Celtic Frost song to cover it might of made a positive difference.