Grim Reaper - Fear No Evil (1985)^{Release ID: 7549}

I was a reasonably big fan of the 1983 debut album “See You In Hell” from Worcestershire-based four-piece heavy metal outfit Grim Reaper. It was unfortunate that it came so late in the NWOBHM game really because the band had enormous potential. “See You In Hell” even reached number 73 on the US charts & went on to sell over a quarter of a million copies. But would Grim Reaper be able to capitalize on that early promise with their 1985 sophomore effort? Let’s find out, shall we?  

The “Fear No Evil” album was once again recorded at the Ebony Records recording studio in Hull with label founder Darryl Johnston handling the production duties. Ebony was a fairly underground label & had cut its teeth through the release of albums such Savage’s “Loose ‘n Lethal” & Chateaux’s first couple of records. It was a very small operation so it’s no surprise that Johnston had also produced “See You In Hell” & “Loose ‘n Lethal” himself. But the releases I just mentioned all had a fairly raw & brutal NWOBHM production with a big rhythm guitar sound that offered a fair bit of appeal for an old metalhead like myself. “Fear No Evil” sees Johnston veering away from that a little with a more professional production that places more emphasis on the vocals whilst still maintaining that gritty edge that the New Wave had built its reputation on.  

Unlike the striking image that adorned the debut, the “Fear No Evil” cover artwork is nothing to write home about as it portrays an awkward image of the grim reaper himself, riding a motorcycle through a plate glass window that’s presumably located in a church somewhere. It’s far more childish than it is intimidating.

Musically though, this is a very similar record to “See You In Hell” as it relies heavily on the same formula of simple, chuggy, mid-paced power-chord riffs & over-the-top falsetto-style vocals. It’s almost as if the band have intentionally limited themselves to a meticulously defined musical palate & in the process have sacrificed their artistic license for the sake of accessibility. This is about as meat-&-potatoes as heavy metal gets with straight-forward verse/chorus style song structures, simple bare-bones riff composition & a repetitive approach to the vocal hooks. Steve Grimmett’s vocal delivery is about as powerful as any you will find & I get the impression that Darryl Johnston knew full well thathe was only the only thing Grim Reaper had going for them because they really do milk him for all he’s worth here with the simply yet catchy choruses being repeated over & over again. Grimmett’s up to the task most of the time too although there are certainly moments when he can be overpowering & monotonous given that he’s often tasked with adding interest to an otherwise fairly generic musical landscape. And does he really have to sing the song title at the start of every song? Lyrically we see Grimmett swapping between darker occult themes & a Judas Priest party-time direction which isn’t half as interesting but seems to fit the band’s sound a little better as they’re not the most imposing of metal bands. I would love to hear what Grimmett could have done over a more professional backing track though. 

Despite the fact that “Fear No Evil” is a slightly tighter & more polished record than “See You In Hell” was, the rest of the band still have limited technical skills to be brutally honest. Original drummer Lee Harris had recently been replaced with new boy Mark Simon but this hadn’t made a huge difference to the end result given that Simon was only marginally more talented. It would seem that guitarist Nick Bowcott had only just discovered Eddie Van Halen’s two-handed tapping technique because he goes to town on it on almost every solo here. Unfortunately for Nick, he’s just not a very good guitarist so it all sounds fairly tedious to my ears. But Grim Reaper seemed to know their strengths & that was in making a fairly derivative brand of heavy metal that all sounds relatively similar. They were very much the one-trick pony & it’s hard to argue against claims that a lot of this material was built around ideas that had been rehashed from the debut. Even if that wasn’t the case, you’re destined to feel that you’ve heard most of these riffs many times before. They’re just not that distinctive & Grim Reaper rely far too heavily on Grimmett to pull them out of the fire. Thankfully he’s up to it for the most part with a couple of noteable exceptions. Particularly the corny Twisted Sister-style hard rock number “Rock ‘n’ Roll Tonight” which is as generic as they come & features a blatant rip-off of the opening riff to Iron Maiden’s “2 Minutes To Midnight” at the start. The tacky horror movie intro to closing number “Final Scream” isn’t much better although it would strangely be ripped off by US death metallers Dying Fetus on their “Grotesque Impalement” EP fifteen years later.  

Overall, “Fear No Evil” is an obvious step down from the debut as far as song-writing goes but it’s far from a disaster. It’s certainly a flawed piece of work but Grimmett’s talent & charisma is enough to keep me interested for the majority of the album. I’ve become a pretty big fan of his these days with his more unpolished work on “See You In Hell” & Chateaux’s “Chained & Desperate” albums having dug its teeth into me quite deeply. But there can be very little doubt that “Fear No Evil” suffers from not having differentiated itself enough from “See You In Hell”. It’s essentially a poor man’s version of that album so the band’s early fan base grew tired of it quite quickly & this was only exacerbated by the wealth of more exciting extreme metal that had exploded onto the scene in the time between records. Grim Reaper really couldn’t afford to come up with an inferior product if they were going to go with a package that sounds so familiar. But when taken on its own merits, “Fear No Evil” is certainly an enjoyable listen that should appeal to fans of Judas Priest, Dio & Twisted Sister. It’s just an inessential one if you’ve already got a copy of “See You In Hell” which does the same thing only slightly better.