WAR//PLAGUE – ON A DARKER DAWN LP
WAR//PLAGUE – On A Darker Dawn
This album almost perfectly captures everything I love about metallic crust. The riffs are infectious and the double kick drum rumbles like my guts after a late night bean burrito. The way I see it crust kind of falls into three categories these days. You got your TRAGEDY melodic, dark hardcore bands that build and build and create epics soundscapes. I often get lost in much of this style and it doesn’t really stick with me. Then you got your BOLTHROWER worship bands that just crush but often forget about the hooks and just keep pummeling you with their war hammers until you are nothing but a bag of meat. Then you’ve got the bands that can find a way to make catchy crust that gets your head banging, your fist in the air and…YOU CAN SING ALONG! All my favorite bands are here in spirit and influence with this release. AMEBIX, MISERY, AXEGRINDER and a lot of EXTINCTION of MANKIND. Hell, there is even hint of NEUROSIS in there at times as well as a tip of the hat to SDS. WAR//PLAGUE make the doom and gloom fun, they bring a smile to your face because they are so SICK and keep you thrashing because they are so…SICK! WAR//PLAGUE provides the kind of experience where you just feel like you’re in the know and on to something special as you let the record spin, I love it when a record is able to capture that feeling. On some of the earlier releases it felt like the lyrics offered some hope to this madness but I don’t really find that this time around. The lyrics are grizzly and offer vivid depictions of a darker dawn. I was just listening to the new TESTAMENT album on the way home today and I came to the realization that the riffs on this record are sick enough for a full blown thrash metal titan like TESTAMENT. I mean that as a compliment of the highest regards…that the caliber of the riffs on this record would certainly get the approval of heavy weights like the guitar duo of Peterson and Skolnick. The production is perfect for this type of music. It’s clean enough that the instruments don’t get buried in fuzzy mud but it is also dirty enough to create a thick crust. This album hasn’t left my turn table in about two weeks and I came to such high off this record that yesterday I was asking Leffer (guitar) for a backpatch. He pointed me to Nightgaunt graphics and such an item quickly procured. (Josh Mosh)
ThrashPunx 