Tuesday, 25 February 2014

Thunderwar - The Birth of Thunder

THUNDERWAR - The Birth of Thunder (Self financed - CD 2013)
Life keeps surprising me all the time and every week the metal underground brings some killer new bands. Here is a band, which I haven't heard about until couple of weeks ago, but I already have their debut EP and I feel very impressed by their music. They're called Thunderwar - yeah, not the most suitable name for death metal band, I guess, most maniacs will probably think it fits some power or viking metal bands more, but who cares... They were first called Perun, so the first band moniker was even more misleading hehe. These four young lads have just recorded their first EP titled "The Birth of Thunder", released in 500 copies on truly awesome digipack and I am amazed. First off, great packaging. It is selfreleased CD, but of very high quality, what makes you think you don't really need record labels anymore, you can do everything by yourself! Here we have a digipack, with truly killer artwork in the front, plus the music, which is professionally recorded (Hertz Studio - great sound quality guaranted)... Yeah, these guys did great job with the whole packaging, but also with the production and finally also the songs are very good, so summing it all up - we have really great debut here!
The music of Thunderwar is death metal. Stylistically they are close in my opinion to bands such as Vader, Unleashed, Pestilence (these vocals remind me some Patrick Mamelli a lot hehe), some late era Death... There are even more thrashing riffs, in style of recent Kreator albums, so if you take some characteristic parts of each of these bands, then you may know what "The Birth of Thunder" is like. Their music is not too brutal, in my opinion, it is rather kind of more atmospheric death metal, with some quite melodic riffs here and there, but with few fast and aggressive moments as well, so we have a nice diversity in the music of Thunderwar. This music is also quite memorable, I bet many of these riffs will stick in your head for good. Personally I prefer their more aggressive and vicious side, while some melodic moments are not bad, but not entirely in my musical taste (especially in the song called "Eagle of Glory", which may have some too Amon Amarth like moments... and I am not a big fan of this Swedish band). But my favourite song is probably "Vimana (The Chariots of Heaven)", for its great death thrashing riffing and kind of epic chorus, what sounds really cool. Meanwhile the instrumental track "The Birth of Thunder" will surprise for its atmospheric music, use of acoustics and just completely different to the rest of material feeling. It does fit the EP somehow, so it is good stuff. Yeah, I can say that I definitely enjoyed the music from this Warsaw based band and I think that we will hear some more good stuff from Thunderwar in the near future. Keep your eyes open!
Final rate: 75/100

1 comment: