Space Parasites: Make Me Evil
Photo by Marc Peschke
A Witch at the Wheel, Foot to the Floor
Berlin's Space Parasites have made a special kind of metal soup on Make Me Evil, their fourth full-length and their second turn through Martin Buchwalter's Gernhart Studio in Troisdorf. It's lean, it's mean, and it's built around a recurring witch mythology the band has been deepening for years — here she's the vessel, the curse, the one pulling the strings while everyone else burns. Whether that pull works for you is going to come down to one thing, and we'll get there. First, the bones.
The structure is really good. This is a tight band playing tight songs. The guitar tandem of Sebastian "Iron" Daschke and Matti Massaker carries the record, and what keeps it from blurring into one long fast part is how much imagination sneaks into the riffing. There's a recurring move — call it a little jazz-blues "lift" buried inside what is otherwise unrepentant thrash — that gives certain passages a subtle swing. It's fast and it's nasty. But that flicker of melodic character makes Space Parasites sound like they're having more fun than the genre usually allows.
If you want the album's calling card, start with "Bedeviled Witch," the single. It opens on a great thrashy vibe and then keeps accelerating to the point where the beat is almost overkill-fast — which, depending on your tolerance, is either the appeal or the warning label. The main riffs are strong and built to mosh to, the bass break is short and well-placed, and the solo is the standout: it's got a little soul to it, a faint blues undertow, and it still hits the metal mark dead-on. For headbangers, this is the one.
From there the record fans out more than its tempo suggests. "Neckwrecker" is the most straightforwardly fun track on offer — a drum intro, an immediate solo, a dive into bass and vocals, then back into a thrash beat that keeps the moshpit going. There's a distinctly old-school flavor here, the kind of crossover-thrash energy that older heads will clock as a nod to bands like S.O.D. "Hellbound" plays like a dark roller-coaster, sliding from those slick opening riffs into a heavy-metal stomp, getting genuinely progressive in the middle before a traditional shred solo and an easier landing. "Monster" is the drummer's showcase: it shifts from classic heavy metal into thrashier and then harder territory with a ton of beat changes, and the kit work stays locked in through every one of them. "Tarot" is the nostalgia hit, a textbook thrash headbanger whose rhythm changes carry that lived-in, '80s warmth.
The band also knows when to color outside the lines. The intro sets the whole mood — rain, thunder, an electrical buzz, a distant guitar and scattered drums, and a creepy whispered voice that swells as the guitar climbs. "Fortress" slips a strange little bell tone in under the opening riffs and then lets it vanish, a small touch that gives the track its own fingerprint. "How Often" is the breather: it mixes majors and minors into something unexpectedly musical before sinking into darker, minor-key territory, slower than everything around it — not a ballad, but ballad-adjacent in a way that lets you catch your breath. And closer "She" opens on a gorgeous reverb-soaked guitar effect before the heavy metal kicks the door back in, with riffs that swing and a couple of nice rhythm turns to send you out.
Now, the vocals — because they are the conversation. Nadine "Danger Dine" Beise sings demonically rather than going for the standard low death growl, and the result sits higher, sharper, and scratchier than the genre default. It's less a melody than an incantation: snarled and screamed at once, more hex than hook. This is, frankly, the album's most divisive element, and I'd be doing you a disservice to pretend otherwise — it's the one thing a listener should be ready for going in. The flip side: A fully unleashed female voice channeling that witch-conjuring menace is exactly the kind of thing that's drawing younger metalheads to extreme music right now, and on a concept record literally built around a vengeful sorceress, it's not a quirk — it's the whole point. If that snarling, witchy register is your thing, this album is going to feel custom-built for you.
So who's Make Me Evil for? Both ends of the room, honestly. The 45-to-60 crowd gets the crossover-thrash nostalgia, the traditional shredding, and the classic heavy-metal scaffolding holding it all up. Younger metalheads get the blistering near-death-metal velocity, the occult concept, the moshable bottom end, and a frontwoman conducting the whole ritual. The solos are solid and well-fitted, but the riff imagination and the drummer's restless inventiveness carry a lot of the weight. Eleven tracks deep (ten songs plus that atmospheric intro), it leaves you good and “full”.
Bottom line: this is a tight, well-integrated heavy metal record where everybody's playing locks together, and at its core it's exactly what it sets out to be — fun, dark, creepy thrash. Space Parasites aren't reinventing anything, but they’re playing the game with a lot of character, more menace, and more sheer enjoyment than most. Crank it.
Get the music here:
Bandcamp | Fetzner Death Records Germany (CD Digipack) | FDR Cassette
