Album Review: Warbringer - "Wrath and Ruin"

It’s hard to know what to think about Warbringer.  The band is rapidly closing in on twenty years as a going concern, but the road has been tumultuous and rocky.  If the band’s breakthrough effort was 2009’s “Waking Into Nightmares,” then the band has rotated ten different members through the lineup in the intervening time, including every position except for the singer.

Given all of that, Warbringer should be praised for their consistency.  All of their albums bristle with the same kind of modern thrash that seemed a lost art when the band debuted with “War Without End” in 2008. Which, as far as it concerns this new record “Wrath and Ruin,” means that it’s easy to make the editorially lazy argument that if you like Warbringer, you’ll like this album, and that the opposite is also true.

Yet, isn’t that damning with faint praise?  Unfortunately, what comes part and parcel with that is that “Waking Into Nightmares” remains the band’s gold standard, and none of their albums since that time have lived up to that high bar.  To listen to that instant classic again, is to hear both the shredding and creativity of guitarist John Laux, but also the extraordinary percussion of Nic Ritter (RIP,) who was without question the best drummer the band ever had, and that’s also the only album he’s on.

Absent those pieces has come a parade of capable and talented musicians, but the pieces are too uniformly emulsified now.  There’s the capable solo of “Neuromancer” on this new record, but overall, the songs are fine…but that’s what they are.  They don’t stand out from the Warbringer pre-existing music, and most of them don’t truly stand out from each other.

At the risk of copping-out by making an easy parallel, “Wrath and Ruin” feels something like Warbringer’s version of “...And Justice For All.”  There are only eight cuts, there are three over six minutes and another at five and a half, and the band is clearly putting pieces together and experimenting with new bridges and sections (“Through a Glass, Darkly” is on the border of black metal, for instance.) Tempo seems to be a big part of “Wrath and Ruin,” as the band tries their hand at different speeds in different sections, trying to find a comfort zone that feels novel and yet still recognizable as Warbringer.

The attempt is laudable, but nothing here truly catches hold - the riffs don’t bite, the drums don’t snap, and there’s no single moment or performance that makes the listener’s eyes (or ears) widen in admiration.  It’s more Warbringer, to be certain, and there’s nothing to be ashamed of about that, but that’s all it is.

Of course, historically, after “...And Justice For All” came the Black Album…