Album Review: Warkings - Reborn

We've talked about gimmicks before. A gimmick is often treated as a way of demeaning whatever group it is we're talking about, because there is a segment of the population that thinks the music is the only thing that matters, and the sole thing that impacts success. That's ridiculous, because the music business is as much about getting ears to hear your music as it is that music pleasing the fans once they hear it. So gimmicks work. Ghost won fans over with their increasingly infectious music, but they were able to get to do that because their gimmick drew people's interest first. It's the only reason KISS has ever been anything but a lousy cock-rock band. It's why people think David Lee Roth is a great frontman, when he wastes the time your money paid for by doing karate moves on stage. Life is a gimmick. Get over it.

Warkings is also a gimmick. There's no issue with that, other than the fact that the gimmick is one of the least effective I've ever seen. They are hand-picked by Odin himself to bring metal to the masses, a faceless combination of musicians who represent the best of what power metal can be.

That would be fine, except for the fact that any power metal fan who has ever heard any of his previous work will immediately know who the vocalist here is. Gimmicks don't work nearly as well when there's no possible was to suspend disbelief, even for a second. If you're claiming anonymity, it helps to start with an anonymous musician.

But what about the music? They play a predictable style of chunky power metal with heavy lyrical themes of war. Frankly, I'm sick and tired of hearing about how great war is, and how much I should lionize warriors. The topic is so worn out and tired, and given the political discourse of the day revolving around the toxicity of modern masculinity, it feels wrong to be spending entire albums praising mass bloodshed and death. War is one of the failings of humanity, and here we have another group making it sound like a gift from the gods.

Fortunately, from a philosophical perspective, not a lot about this album works as a hymnal. I will say that "Never Surrender" is a cracking power metal anthem, and is generic enough in the lyrics to be inoffensive. It is a good example of what power metal is at its best. It is surrounded, though, with songs like "Hephaistos", which eschew melodies and hooks for droning chants that aren't engaging at all. There is a belief that those sorts of vocal parts sound 'big', but layers of voices don't make something interesting. If it's a boring vocal line, it's a boring vocal line no matter how many singers are included.

"Battle Cry" and "Holy Storm" are also fine enough tracks, but not anything that will set the world on fire. For being sold as much emanating from the halls of Valhalla itself, Warkings have given us a rather generic album. There's plenty of power metal that sounds like this, and most of it is able to sound catchier while doing it. As I was saying at the beginning, a gimmick is a fine way to get attention, as long as the music is able to back it up. In the case of Warkings, it doesn't. Even with the gimmick, or maybe because of it, the music isn't good enough to live up to the claims.