The Accused were from Seattle and came up with their own sarcastic hybrid of punk, metal, and horror-inspired content and imagery that put a lot of other serious practitioners to shame. I had heard a few of their songs and albums, and one day came across this CD used somewhere real cheap, then snapped it up. Turns out, it was really just a hodge-podge of odds and ends thrown together for an EP. The actual style of The Accused is pretty crazy to begin with – they play fast, loud, and mean, but not like speed metal fast – the overall sound gives the impression of a victim trying to desperately stumble away from its’ killer. Singer Blaine Cook vocalizes like a mix between the victim’s dying last breath and the killer’s guttural throes as he’s doing the deed, just to overuse the analogy a bit more. Fabled grunge producer Jack Endino, to me, either makes these guys sound too clean, or sometimes dares to drown out Cook’s vocals (“The Corpse Walks”). He also produced the group’s previous effort, Grinning like an Undertaker, and coincidentally, two songs from that album make their way onto this CD, which makes me wonder if Undertaker is worth price of admission. There are some good points, here and there – the opener “No Hope for Relief” is decent, the cover of “Saturday Night Special” (here titled “Saturday Nite Special”) is attention-grabbing – but overall, the material, the delivery, production, just everything feels strangely muted to a large degree. Included is a live track (“Voices”) but close to half of it is devoted to inane stage banter. This is a sub-par disc from an otherwise interesting group.