The Final War / Plagueridden

The setup of this release is kind of curious; it's comprised of a reprint of Warlust's mCD and a one-off rehearsal track by associated band Pestis, which is so far the only thing that band has released. Calling it a split would be charitable; it's more a Warlust CD with a random promo track attached to it. I'm kind of interested in why more bands don't do stuff like this; I mean, if you have a decent one-off track, why not throw it on something you're already going to release for some cross-promotional opportunity?

Warlust isn't particularly interesting; they play mildly fast black metal that seems pretty US derived. It mostly reminds me of a band such as Kult Ov Azazel without being as interesting. You've heard essentially every idea the band has within a couple minutes of 'Haat'; blast turns into a black'n'roll breakdown, the drums keep changing in an attempt to give more life to the riffs than there actually is. A lot of militaristic-style marching beats are used, again to try and give the music a gravitas that isn't really there, and overall the content of this music just sort of sounds like a band spinning in circles desperately looking for some interesting direction in a sea of clichés and incredibly strained vocals. Everything is derived from other, better bands; there's just no depth to these tracks and they feel interminably long.

It's like Warlust has a lot of ideas but they're all pretty similar to each other and none of them go anywhere. It's amazing how directionless the music feels; the riffs and rhythms change constantly, but in a wholly arbitrary way that makes me wonder if the members only started a black metal band because they had nothing better to do. In addition, the sort of smug, cocky feel of the music grates on the nerves; the terribly placed evil cackling in 'Haat', the Dark Funeral-style eeeeevil melodic sense, the overuse of rhythmic breakdowns, etc. I can't imagine why anyone would actually want to listen to this. I understand that New Zealand has a pretty tiny black metal scene, but shit, even then there's better stuff to listen to than this on that godforsaken island. At least the last track is a relatively fun little punky number with silly solos and an actual sense of energy behind it.

Pestis is sort of more arbitrarily warlike and angry sounding. Fairly discordant, choppy riffs dominate the song, though the melodic style isn't wholly different from Warlust, but overall it's more interesting than that band because the track kind of has some direction to it even if the direction isn't very interesting. I can pick a little half-assed Niden Div. 187 influence in the production and some of the poor man's pseudo-melodic riffing, and while that's cool it's not executed particularly well. I don't know, Pestis is better than Warlust but it's still just one fairly unremarkable song that only stands out because it's preceded by crap.

There's really no point to acquiring this release but I'm sure that all those who simply need every CD with a monochromatic cover will acquire it anyway, so go ahead. Really though it's just dumb and pointless music and I've absolutely heard enough of that already.