WARPATH
Bullets For A Desert Session
Massacre (2017)
Rating: 5/10
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Warpath is a German outfit who began life in 1991 but split in 1998, only then to reform in 2015. Bullets For A Desert Session is the band’s fifth opus and their first for over 20 years, but it’s not one keen to revisit those early albums. If anything, this groove-based slab of metal would seem more suitable to the latter part of the 90s and into the 2000s.
Sure, there’s a vibrant mix of several extreme metal styles – a polished death metal, a doomier thread here and there and hints at hardcore and thrash – but in spite of such variations the band’s latest album is one that leaves me rather cold.
I won’t deny the energy of the combo; Dirk Weiss makes for a formidable frontman and his attack is made all the more bruising by Flint’s deadly riffage and Norman Rieck’s stormy percussion that makes Warpath an armour-plated vehicle completed by the bass bludgeoning of Sören Meyer. But to these ears it’s Teutonic metal that has seen better days.
Fans of Sodom, Destruction et al may appreciate the power and muscularity of this trudging machine of war, particularly with the likes of opener ‘Reborn’, ‘When War Begins’, ‘No One Can Kill Us’ and ‘God Is Dead’, and yet for all of its angst, passion and fury I sense a band somehow left behind. Warpath have arrived too late to each and every party and however much they try it feels as if we’re hearing something stale – maybe they’re just trying too hard?
At times generic in nature, Warpath’s latest album bangs its head against numerous brick walls but to no real effect. Yes, the riffs appear crushing, the drums batter, the bass rumbles and Dirk Weiss puts in decent vocal performance, but why the band seems to lack character is beyond me? Why the formulas just don’t add up only they can probably answer, but there is most definitely something missing here as the likes of ‘No More Time To Bleed (Thrashunion)’ and the title track rumble off the conveyer belt.
The early 90s were a difficult time to get recognised due to the changing face of music and by the middle of the decade I would’ve thought that Warpath’s sound may have found its home, but with this new incarnation set up behind Dirk Weiss I still hear a band lost in space and lacking identity. This is average stuff, and that’s all there is to it.
Neil Arnold
