Album Review: Wage War – Deadweight

Tyler H. August 4, 2017 208 Comments 229 views 0 likes

Wage War defined hype in the core world with the release of their debut album Blueprints. It truly had something that had been missing in the metalcore scene for years. And now with the anticipation for their upcoming album, Deadweight, being at an all time high many are poised and ready to headbang with a salivating metal hunger. Rather than try and reinvent the wheel, Wage War take everything that perfects the metalcore genre and then kick it into a masive overdrive. The album is jam-packed full of emotion, teeming wih visceral breakdowns, soaring choruses and ball-blistering riffs. The band only further cements that they are at the top of their game and show no signs of quitting.

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Genre: Metalcore/Progressive Metalcore
Label: Fearless Records
Release: August 4th, 2017
Connect: Facebook | Twitter
Purchase: iTunes | Google Play
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While the band created a strong sound with their debut, Deadweight is a massive step up from that and it’s noticeably straight away thanks to the well-crafted opener, “Two Years”. The track sets the tone of the album with a haunting buildup that blends into low screams before exploding with a flurry of a thousand suns instrumentally, finally ending with a high-pitched wail. This song then flows into “Southbound”, creating an illusion of sorts of a longer, more cohesive song that comes out of the gate swinging before guitarist/singer Cody Quistad’s crooning vocals take centerstage and will immediately get listeners standing up, singing along. It’s this blend of the heavy, and sometimes fairly brutal style with the more approachable, softer moments that ascend upon listeners that made them fans of Wage War in the first place and with Deadweight, it’s ramped up to 11 and delivered in spades.

Wage War – Witness (Official Music Video)

DIGITAL: http://smarturl.it/wwdeadweight US MERCH: http://smarturl.it/deadweightbundles EU MERCH: http://smarturl.it/deadweighteu CD/ LP AND DIGITAL (AUS): http://smarturl.it/deadweightaus Taken from the new album ‘Deadweight’ available now. Stay connected: http://wagewarband.com http://facebook.com/wagewar http://twitter.com/wagewar http://instagram.com/wagewarofficial Directed by Orie McGinness of Enlighten Creative Studio http://www.enlightencreativestudio.com/ Produced by Jeremy McKinnon and Andrew Wade. Mixed by Andrew Wade.

This leads to the other unforgettable side of Deadweight; the composition of each track and the overall flow of the album. Each song manages to forge its own identity while retaining elements that make them fully in-tune with the whole of what Wage War are all about, resulting in an incredibly catchy and memorable listen from start to finish. By taking a more calculated approach to the songwriting, it’s resulted in much more emotional, arena-anthemic style songs like “Gravity” and “Johnny Cash” that showcase one side of the band. The other side puts front-man Briton Bond directly into the spotlight as heavy hitters “Stitch”, “Deadweight” and “Disdain” will assuredly please the oldschool metalcore fans that want a dose of hard hitting brutality to mosh with. When put together in the full package that Deadweight is, it ends up being one of the bands greatest strengths – that is, not attempting to reinvent the genre with intricacy or overly technical aspects, but instead refining their craft until the output is finely detailed, damn good metalcore.

Whether you are a fan of catchy, infectious choruses, or bouncy, skull-crushing breakdowns and riffs, there is plenty to dig about Deadweight. It is the literal epitome of everything you would want in a metalcore album. Saturated with the upmost intense and heavy of moments, yet never once lacking in melody, nor emotion. Blueprints lived up to its namesake, cementing one of the most bright and prosperous futures for such a new band, in such a (at times) lackluster scene. Deadweight proves that was only the beginning, and Wage War have done just what the band name promises; waged war on the scene today, with promise to take it clean over. This has promised to make Deadweight one of the best metalcore releases of the year.