ALBUM REVIEW: Warbringer - Wrath and Ruin

This is the thing with the new wave of thrash, You can drop the “new" and call them … well, …thrash. 

Warbringer have been around for 20 years or so, and to honour this milestone they have released … well a thrash album. The South Californian thrashers have stayed true to the path with the album Wrath and Ruin. It's a “cut me down the middle and I will bleed thrash” kind of thing. And I'm not being facetious. When I hear a collection of songs from a band like this I often think back to when the big four were 20 years into their careers. We had stadium rock pomp, Nu metal leanings, and band members almost killing themselves with excess. And nearly all the true thrash fans saying “the big four don't play thrash anymore, I remember seeing them in clubs, why don't they play smaller places for the real fans, ( and here's the biggie) , they've sold out maaannnnn". 

And yet here is a band, not selling out after two decades of thrashing, playing better but the same style with wits they started, gigs in clubs with proper pits and stage diving, and you still get the naysayers. “It's just the same ol' thrash, its not like it was back in the day, it's no Master of Puppets”. 

Well, that might be true but amongst the right tracks on the album you've got fast ones, like opener The Sword and the Cross. Strike From the Sky, where the singer does go a little bit above his range but you can't knock the enthusiasm, Cage of Air, which is a seven-minute fast thrasher and epic closer (which is just thrash code for quiet at the beginning quiet at the end) The Last Of My Kind. 

You've got faster still with A Better World and The Jackhammer, which is a story of two halves and a power metal power ballad breaking up the album in the middle in the form of Through A Glass, Darkly. Throughout the album you get venomous vocals spat out so hard that the front row of the gig will be covered in spittle, screaming solos and thunderous double bass kicking. (They also love an intro…..they really do love an intro). 

Pick your side thrashers, I'm on the side of Warbringer. It's not new but it's fresh, hungry and nasty. With the genre that's been going for 50 odd years, that's a hell of a thing to do.

Wrath and Ruin is out now via Napalm Records

Review by Carl Black