The Declaration

I'm not sure why, but Canadian extreme metal bands all seem to have a certain warlike, militaristic quality that I highly enjoy. It's probably logical that this element is even more pronounced with the very nature of the sound in their name. Warmarch is about 75% death, about 25% black, and around 100% oldschool. Every bit of this sounds like it came out of 1995, and if they had, they would likely have been touring right along side artists such as Angelcorpse. Their debut LP, however, has only been released in This Year Of Our Lorde 2007, and so they might require a bit of time to ramp up to the status they'll most likely receive.

I like 'The Declaration' a lot. It's very straightforward in that oldschool death metal way, where extra elements weren't deliberately eschewed, but were present, just in a relatively limited form. There are small 'South Of Heaven' style clean guitar portions littering this release, but they're not ever made to be more than, well, 'South Of Heaven' style clean guitar portions. They're just a part of the music, not included to qualify as 'progressive elements'. In fact, the music is really very simple when you get down to it, but that doesn't mean it's minimalist or underdeveloped. Quite the contrary: every song here is very complete and very solid, with an emphasis on pure oldschool sound and intensity. There isn't any excessive blasting or tremolo riffing: everything is restrained just enough to prevent it from becoming just another death metal album. Instead of going the directly extreme route, Warmarch channels that same energy into writing really, really good music.

Most of the riffs on 'The Declaration' clearly have their roots in thrash metal more than death. Yeah, it's tuned a bit lower, and it's played faster and more brutally, but most of these riffs are ones you could hear on old Slayer albums. The black metal influence comes in some of the cool little semimelodic tremolo riffs that they have, and some of the half-arpeggios that come out of the older Mayhem catalogue. A lot of these riffs seem at first glance to be cannibalized from other bands, but I don't think that's really it: I think the riffs here are just very traditional and familiar in nature, and genuinely seem like they could have come out of the early to mid '90s. So does the guitar tone: it has a fuzzy, almost Sunlight distortion about it that mingles very nicely with the clanking, rusty bass tone. Vocals are similarly cool: a sort of half-growl, half-rasp delivery that sounds like something that could have come out of the Gothenburg scene back when it was original and not completely, COMPLETELY lame. They're executed pretty flawlessly, apart from the occasional, rather forced sounding inhaled scream or growl.

The most original and readily identifiable sections of this are the most militaristic. When the band drops down to midpace, and the drummer starts working some dramatic wartoms or military snare rolls, and the guitars start palm muting away, the band is at its best. Think of it as a very oldschool version of the sort of thing Behemoth specializes in now: so, not quite as cleaned up, and not quite as machinelike. More like an army of orcs than an army of soldiers. Additionally, the artwork is cool. It has the total package, really.

This is not original music. Its roots are firmly in the past, and that's clearly the way they want it. For all the people obsessed with Ribspreader and Drawn And Quartered out there, this should be the next one on your wishlist. Most importantly, it's packed with riffs that really are quite impossible not to headbang to. Try the opening Nunslaughter-meets-Slayer riff on the eponymous track. You can't miss it.