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Warbringer: IV: Empires collapse

28/10/13 || Ironpants

“Off with their heads!”

Thrash metal, old school thrash, re-thrash, retro-thrash, neo-thrash… you name it. It seems to be my current niche here at GD to take care of this style of music? I don’t mind, I am in a thrash mode at the moment, and opinions, yeah, I got ´em. Warbringer is one of those younger bands people like to call re-thrash, and no matter of what you think about the term, I think that with a fourth album coming up, you are no longer allowed to be called a newcomer.

These guys emerged in the wave of new thrash swarming the earth around 2006-2008 together with a bunch of other virgins such as Evile, Toxic Holocaust, Havok and Bonded By Blood to name a few. They all have their roots in this oh so loved (?) genre, and all of them have of course developed their own styles, some of them with success, some of them sounding more and more like their old idols. I think Warbringer is one of the bands that have had the best success of weaving their own personal identity into the thrash spider web so far.

Well, lets cut the crap and jump into the fire. The album starts out with “Horizon”, that is a perfect song that will help you open your eyes for what’s to come further on in the rest of the album. It’s a quite ordinary thrash tune at first, but somewhere after the guitar solos it transforms into a black metal inspired blastorama for a while before turning into a quiet ending with acoustic guitars. “The turning of gears” takes over with a very hardcore flirting chorus and the main riff could have been found on some old note from any of the old legends rehearsal rooms. And the first two songs show how Warbringer has broadened their spectrum through the years, there is influences from both old and new stuff, but also from outside of the thrash territory. I am almost willing to call them a progressive thrash band in a way.

Another thing that strikes me, is that the musicianship is pretty much top notch, the guitars are synchronized and lets you take part of several highlights in most of the songs. For example in the second half of “Iron city” where they fall into a real old school heavy metal dual pleasure, and the bass is allowed to freebase underneath like a backup from some old jazz-session. Even I, that usually is not that impressed by guitar show-offs, release a couple of smiles here and there, Laux/Potts behave like the thrash metal equivalent of Tipton/Downing and their build ups in some songs are very 1980’s heavy metal.

A fresh ingredient on this album is the bass work from Mr Mottsman, and just the fact that you hear the man is a kind of success in itself. I always whine about the bass being hidden in the production in my reviews, well, not this time. We are not talking DiGiorgio virtuosity here, but he delivers solid bass works, and quite often he makes small journeys just as if he’s reminding everybody that he is there. Excellent stuff! That’s how you treat the bass, so extra points for that.

And of course, my drum fetish get its dose of genital rubbing, as Cruz behind the drums pounds away like there’s no tomorrow. He is what I like to call an “action drummer”, a dude that that performs his duties as they are supposed to, but can’t really stop making those small things to spice things up, and that shit can backfire if you don’t know what you are doing. That’s not the case here, he knows perfectly well where to just push the song forward, and when to step in and let those small extras go wild.

‘Hunter-seeker’ is the albums “smoker”, and besides a furious classic thrash tempo, we are served blasts and almost death metal like riffing. Check that one out, but have in mind that the song is one of the most classic sounding tunes on the album. There are also a couple of tunes that doesn’t really deliver, like “Leviathan”. This album is without a doubt Warbringer’s most interesting creation so far, and I think they prove that there is more to discover in this area, by just letting in some more references in your songwriting sessions, you can still crank out some interesting stuff from this genre. The solid base of thrash metal, mixed up with blast beats, heavy metal riffing and a clever drum’n‘bass section makes this a pretty interesting release in a normally so watered down style of music. Pretty smooth work guys!

Information
Released: 2013
Label: Century Media Records
Website: www.warbringer.com/
Band
John Kevill: vocals
John Laux: guitars
Jeff Potts: guitars
Ben Mottsman: bass
Carlos Cruz: drums

Tracklist
01. Horizon
02. The turning of the gears
03. One dimension
04. Hunter-seeker
05. Black sun, black moon
06. Scars remain
07. Dying light
08. Iron City
09. Leviathan
10. Off with their heads!
11. Tower of the serpent

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