By Jason Walker
Groove metal’s a funny thing. It’s one of those genres that seems to be in the middle of a venn diagram of multiple other genres and straddles a mix of thrash, death, hardcore and in some cases djent. WoR are someone new to my ears and I’m always down with the idea of giving new music a punt because you never know when you might find a bit of a gem hidden amongst the swathes of new music that’s around now.
‘Prisoners’ is the debut album from North Carolina’s WoR and, to summarize, it’s got some bloody good polish for a debut album to say the least. The band features Bobby DeMoss on vocals, Ben Kaiser and David Nisoff on guitars, Phil Funderburk on bass, and Hunter Crews on drums. The album due to drop this coming Friday (7th of Aug), even features a recognisable cover of The Offspring’s ‘Come Out And Play’, which caught me off guard on my first listen as it seems a bit of an odd choice but I reckon shows off the band as having a good sense of humour.
The album doesn’t waste any time in getting started with it’s thrashy opening track, ‘Kill You’, raw vocals and a guitar tone that’s reminiscent of Sepultura’s, a bass tone that could split boulders and punchy drums, even that open snare works quite well!
Tracks like ‘Caged’ and ‘VI Kings’ bring to mind a lot of early 2000s metal of when I first started getting properly into metal, the use of synths in the background remind me a lot of the likes of Cradle of Filth and older In Flames, the mix of brutality while not losing sight of melodic elements definitely scratches the itch.
As this album progresses through the next tracks of ‘Sirens’ and ‘A Place To Die’, the quality of this album, not just in how good it sounds, but how well the songs are written really stands out. Each track so far has had a proper individual identity, a good solid hook on each, distinct riffs, which is good for me because I often struggle with picking up on lyrics and focus more heavily on the instrumentation for a lot of music – would love to see this stuff played live!
‘Predator’ (previously featured in the most recent edition of our Singles Club) comes straight in with some riffage that Lamb Of God would be proud of, intense and relentless with plenty of pinched harmonics all over the shop – their influences really shine through with this particular song. For a prog metal person like myself ‘T.G.S.O.A.T’ is noticeably quite a short song at a minute and a half but is still a banger for it’s length, a quick interval before their cover of ‘Come Out And Play’. I usually find covers to be a bit hit and miss but this one seems more humorous than anything; it’s a solid cover though with an absolutely filthy breakdown towards the end.
The album closes with ‘Hiraeth’ and ‘Freedom Suicide’ showcasing more melo-death influences, and a bit of good old fashioned chugs that align with the double bass pedal drum work, gotta love some of that rhythmic reinforcement to really drive home the bounce of the song.
On the whole, for a debut album, this is some real good stuff that oozes polish right from the get-go and all the way to the end of it. WoR are onto something good here and they’re on my list of bands to keep an eye out for when they eventually hit Manchester, no doubt in some small sweaty venue like the Star and Garter – the best type of place to experience this sort of stuff.
FFO Lamb of God, Sepultura, Evile, (old) In Flames
- ‘Prisoners’ is released tomorrow (Friday 7 August). You can get your copy HERE.
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