• 1
• 2
• 3
• 4
• 5

Warchild play a bit of a bastard blood mixture of Death, Thrash, and a little bit of Black all leaning heavily into the "melodic" side of things. Now, generally this kind of thing is not really my bag, normally I see "melodic" in the genre and I skip past, so this is not something I would normally listen to. But Warchild manage to pull together something pretty interesting – it's not going to change the world but there are plenty of catchy riffs, ripping solos and pumping metal to keep things rolling.

"Burning" sees a definite drop in production quality, but its pummeling double-bass, Death Metal verses and Black Metal tremolo chorus will keep your head nodding, driving it into double pump territory when the pure Thrash of the closing bridge kicks in. Sounds like it should be a mess right? It actually works surprisingly well. It's not all gold however; the bad attempt at a "ballad" with "Old Man's Legend" is really flat and one of the few places the vocals really fail. It is saved somewhat by some pretty sharp Thrash riffing later into the track, but not quite enough to bring it back around. Everyone except poor old Silentor on bass gets a share of vocal duties here – everything from a sharp Black Metal screech, through a deep Death Metal roar, to both clean male and female vocals definitely adds some variety but makes the vocals a little bit bipolar. Even though they have a keyboard player, there really is little in the way of keys to be heard, and it's not surprising as this isn't really keyboard music – there's far too much good old thrashing metal goodness for there to be much room for them, and they are relegated to the background most of the time, such as on the slower riff-fest of "Revenge".

Ultimately with Desire & Rage you can hear the labour of love that went into it. The production is a mixed bag with some tracks being nice and clean and others suffering from that familiar demo flatness, but the whole thing was recorded and released without label backing, and it comes across in the music. It's not an amazing release, and it's a bit too schizophrenic for its own good, but it has the metal spirit, and there is enough going on here to keep fans of most genres nodding happily along. Try before you buy but definitely take the time to investigate.