Texas war metal band Trench Warfare leaked three tracks from its upcoming work in progress. These tracks revealed a sound that is straight raging war metal surge riffs on the verses, complex Perdition Temple style fills, and melodic undercurrents to choruses that resemble those of early Beherit.
Naturally this provokes interest from metal fans worldwide with caveats. War metal has give itself a bad reputation for being an entry point into black metal for the same droning three-chord nonsense that ushered hardcore punk into irrelevance when it became popular and all the tryhards and poseurs crowded the stage. Trench Warfare tries to balance the Blasphemy-inspired excesses of war metal with variety in riffing and flexible interruptions to relatively standard song structures.
While little is known of this obscure band beyond its contested origins and fugitive status, these tracks augur well for the future of this homebrew outfit. It has its own style and, while these tracks may require refinement to stand out in a crowded field, that is an inevitable and welcome part of experience and will make this promising material stronger.
Tags: trench warfare, War Metal
Brett come on man. That 2nd track should have a warning sticker on. Jesus CHRIST that feedback!
Also, I think you are being unfair to this new war metal crowd.
A)War metal can both as simple as a three chord punk band and technical. There is no universal standard as to how black metal it has to be and how death metal it has to be. It’s lawless.
B)Is there any evidence at all that war metal is an “entry point” to black metal?
C)Even if war metal was simple to play, there is an extra problem playing war metal, black metal, and to a lesser extent death metal that punk bands did not have to deal with: finding the right gear. To get into punk, all you needed was a pawn shop guitar, knowledge of what a power chord was, and a Marshall halfstack. That’s about it. Getting the right gear for extreme metal on the other hand still requires esoteric knowledge about guitar tone and bands do not easily give away their tone secrets. That’s how we make ourselves more exclusionary than punk.
D)There is yet another obstacle getting into extreme metal that punk bands do not have to deal with: stage image. Punk bands especially those ones by the end of 70’s did not require a “uniform” so to speak. War metal, black metal, and to a lesser extent death metal requires a Hessian uniform if you want to leave a lasting impression.
E)Also, punk despite its aggressive energies allowed for political correctness in its music. Making it easier for posers to get in. Any kind of political correctness in extreme metal on the other hand would be super-obvious and obnoxious because to put it simply it goes against the implicit idealogy of the music. Metal is about the truth. Not just the worship of power. Yet another way how extreme metal can be more exclusive than punk.
Guitar production? In the age of amplitube, this isn’t a high bar.
I find this analysis interesting, but it has a back door: the same way consequentialism became utilitarianism. Some will argue that popularity is power and that a rioting mob is the power to change empires. They are on one level correct, on another fatally wrong, in that a mob obeys nothing but its own impulse.
A guitar and Amplitube/Podfarm in the hands of a novice is still going to sound shitty. It still takes a lot of experimentation and experience to make a guitar audible with your preferred tone in a live setting. There is no default “metal” setting that works for all situations.
For all you faggots that think King Diamond was merely an also-ram heavy metal band, perhaps this álbum will change your mind:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q7WWnVwu7Vw
Just so everyone is aware music is objective so if you disagree with this review in any respect then by the powers of the universe you are wrong.
Until Brett changes his mind on his guiding philosophy 10 years later.
But most importantly, where is Richard Head’s fun dong?
Is this much better/different than Archgoat? This band already hit a creative brick wall in just 3 short tracks that sound not too different from everyone’s embarrassing Scum ripoff guitar demo.