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San Antonio's Byfist was first active in the late '80s with a couple of demos then called it quits until 2000 and, 20 years later, we have their debut album, In the End. It's a tale of two sounds with the first half of the album full of pounding, up-tempo heavy/power metal featuring twin-guitar riffing and all the piercing high notes you could want, while the second half is darker and crunchier (still plenty of high singing, though). "Universal Metal" starts the album off in a blaze of speed and catchy choruses that continue through the next few songs before things get introspective on the cautionary "With this Needle I Thee Wed". The album closes with a spot-on cover of Reverend's "Scattered Wits." Byfist seem at home with either style and pull both off admirably so if you like it fast and soaring, like Judas Priest, King Diamond or Laaz Rockit, or menacingly crunchy a la Metal Church or Reverend, In the End has you covered. I don't know if these songs are leftovers from the band's early days ("Guaranteed Death" is the only song that appears on an earlier release according to Metal-Archives) or if they wrote most of this stuff recently, but here's hoping there is more where In the End came from.