Beastwars Album Review

Beastwars Self-titled album

‘Beastwars’ have been around for some time and seem to be one of the bands I always miss seeing for some odd reason which guts me. They have been playing the Wellington scene with local Heavy metal bands like Razorwyre and Elephant of the Ocean and also played with some bigger names like High on Fire , The Melvin’s and the upcoming Kyuss shows. These guys motto is to obey the riff and are very much a guitar based band and they pull no punches just bringing a very strong heavy album.

The cover art alone is one of the first reasons to buy this album because it’s awesome and the opening track Damn The Sky rips you straight into their world. With a grunge sound that reminds me of some early Nirvana with a more Metal edge it soon slips into a more stoner metal sound and dirge which takes the mind. Lake of Fire starts with some very heavy bass sounds reminding you again of Nirvana’s style grunge with almost an Alice n Chains edge. Some of their guitar is very Gothic doom inspired almost calling to mind Type o Negative. Mihi slowly slides under your skin before an almost Soundgarden inspired riff takes you away.

Daggers is a song which carries on with an almost swinging style. There are heaps of nice meaty riffs with lots of Tom Morello type guitar. Call out the Dead is a nice slow grinder as Matt Hyde growls at you like a demon. There are some nice explosive guitar bits at the end of this one. Red God opens with a riff sounding like something Megadeth would love to have written. Iron Wolf’s guitar sounds like something from Danzig with some more Alice n Chains flavour very cool track. Cthulhu also reminds me of Danzig, a nice slow dirge building up into a doom laden stomp.

The pace is picked up for the final track of the album Empire. This song brings to mind the band Down with a bluesy solo near the end.

This is a very cool album which seems to be inspired by later 80’s and early 90’s Metal and Grunge. Guitar styles leaning very much to bands like Soundgarden, Nirvana, Rage Against The Machine and Kyuss. Stoner metal is a tribute to some these bands and these guys have a far more cohesive sound than some of the bands in this genre. Big powerful riffs these guys deliver in their own style. This is a monster of an album and well worth hunting out the Vinyl version of it.

This is a must have NZ Metal album and I can’t wait to see what these guys bring forth next. Be sure to see these guys out on tour when they hit a town near you and Buy the album.