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Bolt Thrower > Honour, Valour, Pride > Reviews > Harachte
Bolt Thrower - Honour, Valour, Pride

And the war machine kept rollin’… - 78%

Harachte, October 23rd, 2004

Three years after “Mercenary” the one and only Bolt Thrower is back on the front with “Honour, Valour, Pride”.
As might be known, Bolt Thrower couldn’t care less about trends and hypes. Hell, Bolt Thrower IS a ‘trend’ of it’s own, the one and only ‘War Metal band’. Which also means that we don’t have to expect something new on this seventh full length.

An impenetrable wall of sound is once again created, a sound we all know so well by now. Three quarters of an hour of pure war like only Bolt Thrower knows how to induce. Dave Ingram’s rasping vocal cords accomplish a grim atmosphere which to my honest opinion fits better within the overall sound than Karl Willets’ grunt ever did. Which of course adds up to the total.
Still, there’s something nagging at me since “The Fourth Crusade” and that’s the little word ‘variety’ A classic Bolt Thrower album like “War Master” for instance combined both very heavy riffs with the occasional needed up-tempo drums, whereas on “Honour, Valour, Pride” the super heavy riffs remain, but the drums changes beats very, very sporadically. A fact that doesn’t make it too easy to listen the CD from front to end…

Don’t take those last comments too serious however, because it’s also a major relief to listen to a CD which sounds heavy as fuck instead of all those nowadays’ ‘hyper blast’ Death Metal bands. A CD which, partly because of the hypnotizing riffs and leads, testifies of perseverance and identity.