“Torchbearer? Never heard of that band before. Ok, I’ll review it.” When Warnaments arrived with the mail it went into my cd-player. “Aaargh, noo Göteborg metal, I don’t like Göteborg metal.”

 

First I really thought this record would be über boring. At the beginning it was. But when I listened to it for the fourth time, I actually started to like this one. I’m really not a fan of the Swedish death-thrash scene, it is just not my thing. Okay, there are a few bands I like, but I can count them on one hand. Torchbearer convinced me of the beauty of their album Warnaments. But why?

First of all; the concept: the entire album is about a naval battle in the 1^st world war between the English and the Germans. There are loads of bands with songs or albums about war, but the 1^st world war is only used by just a few bands.

Well, the songs have loads of variety and the vocals are very nice. The aggressive screams and low grunts go very well together with the razor-sharp guitar riffs. The compositions are a nice mix of melodic thrash and death metal. But although the music is melodic, it never loses the aggressive feeling. Perhaps the fact that the record only lasts for about 35 minutes is a big factor why this album is not getting boring. In my opinion this is a good playtime for this genre.

The production is superb. All the instruments are well mixed. The record really has a very full sound. This record sounds even very good on crappy speakers of a notebook. But without a doubt it belongs in a normal stereo with the volume maxed out.

The only band that comes up in my mind if I should compare it would be Hypocrisy, but like said I’m not a fan of this genre, so I don’t know many bands to compare them with. Sometimes it even reminds me of Dimmu Borgir, and that is a good thing in my opinion.

My favourite song of Warnaments is ‘Where Night Is Total’' with its nice synthesizers at the beginning and great midtempo pumping drums and riffs. Love that one.

Well, if a person like me who doesn’t actually like this genre digs this album, I guess this has to be a must-have for those who do like it.