The Final War

For some reason or another, I keep ending up in Holland for a lot of my recent reviews. I don't know how that keeps happening, it's not on purpose. Perhaps it's because the country had (and still has) such a strong presence in underground extreme metal? Who knows?

Our subject of today, Warlust, deals in fast and uncompromising black metal, hugely influenced by Marduk, War (the Swedish black metal band, not the 70's funk act) and Zyklon-B. Alternating between fast blast beat driven, tremelo-picked full speed ahead sections and slower, more stomping parts, the band work themselves through a collection of enjoyable but, even at that time, pretty overdone black metal. From the scraping guitars, thin production and screeching vocals, it has all been heard before. I'm going to admit that the EP closer is a nice surprise, with Warlust giving us their usual fast black metal attack, but with energetic thrash riffing added, which makes for a pretty awesome track. I wish they had done more with that approach throughout this release.

While I do appreciate the staunch dedication the band has to their art, as well as the true underground spirit this release emanates, at the same time there are some things here I really can't take seriously. The battle samples that bind the tracks together into their war concept are a tad too numerous to my taste, giving me this "yes, we know" vibe. Coupled with the music, it gave me this image of a bunch of kids acting tough, puffing up their chests, instead of that of True Black Metal Warriors. Also, the at times sloppy execution caused some raised eyebrows at times, but actually adds to the underground charm in the end. Hilarity ensued in the track "Zyklon" though, where I couldn't help but laugh at that scream halfway the song, because it sounds like someone is slowly strangling Donald Duck.

In all fairness, Warlust is certainly not the worst band to do the fast black metal thing, but I definitely heard acts that had their shit together better than they do, just check out stuff from Setherial, Battlelust, Enthroned and Scheitan from around the same time and the years before. While I really appreciate the music and underground attitude on this CD, there are also parts that become funny in a very unintentional way, and yes, parts of their image are among those.

This certainly is not a bad release, but stuff like this was a dime a dozen in 1999, and it's probably no surprise that Warlust never managed to crawl out of underground obscurity.