Album Review - Confession (War Curse)

The Great Metal Debate Podcast

War Curse are releasing a new album “Confession” via Metal Blade Records. I’m going to briefly touch on each of the album’s 10 tracks, and then give a longer exposition of my thoughts. First up is “The Nothing (That Is Me)”, which begins with some light acoustic guitar transitioning into electric and then riffs generated at a stomping pace. It’s not very thrashy at all, just seeming to awkwardly build but not exactly going anywhere. Track 2, “Fortress Of Agony”, has an unwieldy bridge that transitions into a somewhat dull verse. The solo here is decent if brief. I’m not sure what they’re trying to accomplish with this song. Frankly it’s not very metal to my ears. Next is the title track, “Confession”. There’s some decent crunching guitars at the beginning, but then the lackluster verse transitions into a chorus that is absolutely horrific. Just terrible execution – this is a full-scale failure on every level. That abortion is followed by “Miracle Broker.” This song is kind of groove metal-ish and perhaps a little proggy at points. The lead break isn’t bad, either. Not great, but not terrible and probably my favorite track on the album. Next is “Power of the Powerless” which is upbeat in the versing but slows and devolves into an unenergetic chorus. There’s a nice interlude and I appreciate some of what of they do with the drumming. But those points aren’t enough to make up for the overall shortcomings. “The Convoy” starts with some interesting guitarwork and vocal melody. I was hoping those would continue and we’d get some full-blown black or folk metal elements introduced, but alas forthcoming was just mid-paced guitars, vocals with a pretense of anger, and another shit-show chorus. The seventh song is “Return To Dust.” We have an initial quasi-thrashy intro and a touch of a melodic riff before the song turns away from promise to an unappealing shouty sing-song. The sad thing is that I think there’s a decent set of riffs there, but the song construction is so poor that they aren’t allowed to breathe. “Return To Dust” is followed by “Sowing Division” which evinces more of the same poor songwriting featuring faux angst vocals comically assembled. There’s a few nice flourishes by the guitarists here, but putting a scoop of ice cream in a bucket of turds still doesn’t make it taste good. The penultimate track is a cover of a Grip, Inc. song, and finally we end with the upbeat “Illusion Of Choice” which does have a nice kinda proggy intro… and then back to another boring set of verses and a lame chorus. As I listened to this I just kept thinking to myself: what on earth were War Curse trying to accomplish with this album? This doesn’t seem to incorporate any appealing elements of metal music. Again, I’m not a huge thrash fan, but I think there are some outstanding thrash acts today doing some truly interesting things. I’m thinking about artists like Vektor, Havok, and Revocation. Not only has War Curse not moved in the direction of those bands, nor brought in engaging influences from other metal sub-genres like death, power, black, folk, symphonic, tech, etc., they seem to have eliminated what thrashy goodness they previously had. What metal band sounds like this? I can’t think of a single one, at least that I’m familiar with. In summary the musical aesthetic on “Confession” is unappealing and devoid of anything memorable or interesting. I’m shocked at how bad this is because War Curse’s previous two full-lengths were decent and I had no reason to think they couldn’t at least create another adequate album. Perhaps the most damning critique I can give – and one I don’t give lightly – is that musically this sounds as much or more hard rock than metal.