, by 1990. Two years later, and now signed to Metal Blade, vocalist Carl Fulli, guitarists Erik Moggridge and Guy Higbey, bassist Mark Bodine, and drummer Bob Cochran had realized that thrash was passé and used their next album, Decameron, as a transition point into death metal, but still few consumers paid any heed. Higbey's departure reduced Epidemic to a four-piece prior to their final album, Exit Paradise, by which time most every vestige of thrash had been discarded, leaving the band treading a more current but ultimately derivative sound borrowed from the likes of Sepultura and Obituary. Inevitably, Epidemic gave up the fight soon thereafter, with Moggridge going off to found deathly stoner rock band Old Granddad. ~ Eduardo Rivadavia