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Warbringer: Waking into nightmares

14/07/09 || Trauma

I’m not going to sugar-coat any relationship I have with Warbringer’s John Laux. I know him from back when I was in high school, when he was into Children of Scrotum jerking it to Alexi Laiho, and in his garage playing Manogay covers. He lived a couple houses down from a kid I was kinda friends with. At the time, I was a better guitarist than he was which is not saying much at all. Not so today, no fucken way. He now has a certifiable cock-extension disguised as a guitar. I don’t exactly talk to this kid every day, nor do I even hear from him more than one very short instant message conversation a year. But he’s a damn cool kid who let me visit the backstage area once and get drunk.

Warbringer’s debut album, “War without end”, was not what I’d call a tremendous album. A shame because the guitars sounded great. I remember specifically telling John a year or so ago that I only liked the song “Combat shock”, and what a good song it was. I told him that if he could make an album with more like that, I’d be a happy camper. I also told him to play death metal with good groove and heavy guitars, so I doubt he listened much to my opinion as he’s butt-first for thrash.

I remember the last instant message conversation I had with him, back in February, when he was telling me about their upcoming album “Waking into nightmares”. The first thing he says to me was that they were going for more of a death metal sound this time around…which I don’t exactly buy, but he’s headed in the right direction I guess. His exact words after that were, “So much better, lol”. Now that I bought, because I was fairly impressed by that song: “Severed reality”. Clearly Mr. Laux has improved in his songwriting abilities. Whether or not that has much to do with Gary Holt being producer was yet to be seen. What I heard reminded me of good Kreator. I was impatient to finally hear this album to see if the whole thing sounded so good.

Sadly, overall I do not think so. What’s not really improved is the quality of songwriting, as opposed to the musicianship. Much like their debut, I absolutely love the guitars. They have a good sound and are the most prominent instrument. They have a new bassist whose been given more presence, and a new drummer that knows how to play more than one fill. I still don’t like the vocals. John Kevill is a cool guy and all, and a good front man, but as a vocalist I’m not a fan. Never was. I can certainly tolerate him more on this album than their last. It’s kind of a bummer that the album doesn’t reflect the skill of all those involved.

“Jackal” starts off pretty promising, and after the first minute they get into a fucken great thrash riff. The solos are much more than Slayer noise, and I’m very impressed by John and Adam’s wood stroking. You can clearly hear they have some inspirations for soloing as some of their passes remind me of some specific guitarists, but I’ll let you decide that should you happen upon this music, that’s part of the fun. “Living in a whirlwind” is not as good a song as the first. “Severed reality” I already mentioned I liked, and still do. “Scorched earth” is also a good track in similar awesomeness to the previous one, but from there the rest of the songs get kinda iffy for me. “Prey for death” is okay, and so is “Senseless life”. The rest of the songs kinda just go by my ears and are quickly forgotten. “Forgotten dead” has some necrovox from bassist Ben, but nothing spectacular.

It took a few spins for me to even get into some of the tracks. They just don’t have that immediate “hell yeah!” that you just hope for when listening to this kind of music. That’s not to say that the music is deep and complex and requires multiple listens, because it doesn’t. I think it’s more like I want to like it, so I am listening closer and closer to find things I do like. For one, they’ve got some great riffs throughout the album. Certainly a high point if you heard them poorly playing covers in their garage. Getting a new drummer definitely helped out a lot, and maybe he had input into the songwriting, that I do not know. The last drummer and his one, seemingly only, fucken fill was annoying to listen to. The drum sound on this album is pretty good, but the kicks sound weird on my laptop. I’d like less of the songs to contain the song title in the lyrics. Kinda like the recent Pestilence album.

Maybe the album will grow on me some more. But this fact remains: while they have improved greatly over their debut, they still have room for even more improvement. I skipped out on seeing them last month to go on a date (which was a mistake), and this album ends up a lot like that very date: appealing at first, but in the end seems uninteresting and a little underwhelming.

Note: This score may be the same as their last album previously reviewed here on GD, but I don’tagree with that score. So if I were to go back to that time period, I give their last one a 4/10. Problem solved.

6.5 scorched and severed penises out of 10.

Information
Released: 2009
Label: Century Media
Website: www.myspace.com/warbringer
Band
John Kevill: vocals
John Laux: guitar
Adam Carroll: guitar
Ben Bennett: bass
Nic Ritter: drums

Tracklist
01. Jackal
02. Living in a whirlwind
03. Severed reality
04. Scorched earth
05. Abandoned by time
06. Prey for death
07. Nightmare anatomy
08. Shadow from the tomb
09. Senseless life
10. Forgotten dead

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