Damnation Play

Warmath is what in metal you could call an anomaly. Their style is interesting in that it doesn't really easily fit into a specific subgenre, yet they carve an interesting path in their music despite being a stylistic outlier. It's got a bit of thrash, a bit of speed, a bit of power, it's very hard to categorize. What's more, it's rare to hear this style coming from Finland in 1991, it sounds more akin to US power metal than what you'd expect from Finnish power metal of the era—nothing like Stratovarius and Tarot.

The main draw of this album—as well as Warmath's main stylistic differentiation from the what you'll usually hear—is their very interesting use of chromatic and dissonant scales/keys in their riffing. It's hard to describe perfectly, but you can easily hear what I mean right on track 1, the title track Damnation Play. It's quite blatantly on display at the 2:06 mark of the first track as well, just so you know what I'm referring to.

They use dissonant chords and scales to create a pounding discordant fervour throughout the album. It really suits their lyrical direction, as they mock society and the trappings of conformism. Not quite as bleak as black metal lyrically, but they're rather dark for a power metal release. Just read the title of the song Rope Trade Doing Well and you'll probably understand. They have just a twinge of tongue-in-cheek in their delivery while they criticize negative aspects of modern society.

The tracks all have a clear structure but a dissonant melody, resulting in this interesting combination of power/thrash metal rhythms with uncharacteristically dark and dissonant guitarwork. The vocalist, Jouni, does a great job of delivering clean vocals in a very aggressive manor, shouting out lines in a distorted manner at some points and delivering notes with a nice rasp elsewhere. Drums are pounding and on point. Bass is audible and quite good; just check out The Land of the Living. Guitarwork as previously mentioned is dissonant and very well written, with some dual leads in there blending together confusion and tumult with often math-like precision.

Due to the dissonance in guitarwork, you'll hear something interesting and new every couple of bars as they change it up frequently. On Seeds of Disorder the song develops from a slow, foreboding, pounding riff into a mid-paced banger, and finally into a fast paced galloping track at the end.

It's not easy to achieve this kind of synergy between lyrical direction and instrumentation, but Warmath does it very well. Their style is somewhat exhausting to listen to due to the cacophonous riffing utilized everywhere, luckily the album doesn't run a huge length. You get served up a 40 minute set of Warmath tracks, hearing something different consistently while not being too long of an album. I wouldn't necessarily call it a hidden masterpiece of an album, but its strengths lie in its ability to stand out and deliver consistently good tracks with a rarely utilized combination of instrumental stylings. It's worth listening to in order to experience their great songwriting.