"In Search of Sanity" could have suffered a far worse fate than it had. Inner turmoil within Onslaught led to drummer Steve Grice leaving the band and reuniting with Steve Grimmett to form what would become The Sanity Days. I think it would have made perfect sense for The Sanity Days to carry on with the spirit of "In Search of Sanity" by making an album geared to sound like the work Grimmett and Grice helped create back in 1989. "Evil Beyond Belief," the first record from this project, doesn't have an iota in common with "In Search of Sanity." In fact, it has nothing to do with the untapped style of Onslaught's odd days. Instead, the routine here runs on basic heavy metal, despite catering to the notion that this is somehow a continuation of "In Search of Sanity" given the band name and the members involved, all of whom once had a stint in Onslaught.

Ripping riffs like those on "Shellshock," adrenaline-pumping choruses, memorable songs teetering on an almost experimental thrash metal cusp-throw them out the window, because they aren't here. What "Evil Beyond Belief" specializes in is diametric to "In Search of Sanity"-other than the inherited repetition factor and the unreasonable running time, of course. The musical base runs on the fuel of mid-paced heavy metal, which is fine, but it is not a direction The Sanity Days does well. An hour's worth of music can be boiled down to taking riffs that would've been fine in the form of a quick bite and funneling them down the listener's mouth for six, seven, eight minutes at a time. I find it disappointing that this isn't geared to resemble "In Search of Sanity" on a musical level; creating that kind of record would probably have at least roused the band from sleepwalking.

Another factor weighing down on this is the lack of stimulating tempos. The drum patterns are time and again slow and lethargic underneath songs that take too long to develop, at day's end rivaling the excitement of washing dishes by hand. Steve Grimmett sounds acceptable, but is noticeably restrained by the vapid musical surrounding in which he finds himself. His performance is stuck in the same rut as the general musical structure found throughout "Evil Beyond Belief": tolerable, yet plagued by nothing interesting going on instrumentally. The one song having any sort of momentum at all is "Firestorm," but its appearance of having energy stems from having been preceded by nine other plodding, monotonous motions which managed to do so little, despite running up ungodly amounts of time.