WARPATH: “BULLETS FOR A DESERT SESSION”

 Album Reviews  1 Response »
Feb 132017
 

 

(TheMadIsraeli reviews the new album by Warpath from Hamburg, Germany, which is out now via Massacre Records.)

Warpath are an interesting musical discovery for me. Originally a thrash metal band that had some moderate underground recognition in the ’90s, the band hung it up until the culmination of a reunion that resulted in a subsequent comeback album. Vocalist Dirk Weiss is the only original member, collecting an entirely new lineup. Warpath, in name, has come back, but with a new sound and one that’s impressive. It would be a shame for people to miss out on this.

Bullets For A Desert Session is a powerful testament to hybridization in metal, and an impressive metallic golem of deathly proportions. While thrash metal is still a part of Warpath’s sound, the band have mixed in the metallic heft and drag of bands like Celtic Frost and Crowbar, the filth of High On Fire, and a style of death/thrash that sounds a lot like The Crown. Dirk Weiss’s vocals are almost like a demonic version of Lemmy Kilmister mixed with the low-end grit of The Crown’s own Johan Lindstrand. Continue reading »

GROT: “I HAVE NO MOUTH AND I MUST SCREAM”

 Album Reviews, SHORT BUT SWEET  3 Responses »
Jan 072013
 

(Any band who names their debut EP after a 1967 Hugo-Award-winning short story by Harlan Ellison is alright in my book. But apart from having good literary taste, their music stacks up pretty damned well, too.  Here’s TheMadIsraeli’s review . . . and we also have a special treat: With the band’s permission, a free download of the music.)

We’re gonna take a bit of a break from year-end round-ups to go over a late 2012 EP I stumbled upon that I think is worth checking out.  GROT are, at their core, an Irish deathgrind outfit with a good bit of old fashioned Dying Fetus groove thrown in, but the membership actually reveals a more international collective:  GROT is composed of the mighty Kevin Talley on drums, John Roche of Gama Bomb on guitars and bass, and Eoin Broughal from Cold War and Warpath on vocals.

I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream is a no-bullshit collection of very mid-90’s deathy grime and venom.  The EP, at least as we have it, consists of five original songs and two covers (Napalm Death’s “Unchallenged Hate” and Misery Index’s “Pulling out the Nails”, though the Misery Index cover doesn’t come on the physical copies) that provide an immensely satisfying morsel of brutality and energy.  This band also has a shitton of meat, in the sense that their riffs, their grooves, their sections of chaotically fast double-bass saturation and grinds all have a massiveness to them that feels like a tonnage of toxic waste spill being shoved down your throat. Continue reading »