Album Review: Weapon of Pride - Beneath The Surface
Reviewed by Matthew Williams
A strange ponderous noise starts off the opening track “Axeman” and I’m intrigued as to where it’s heading but then there’s a familiar twiddly guitar riff to make me feel a bit more at home. Shortly after, the rest of the band join in with their own parts and I can feel a little smile starting to form across my face.
Weapon of Pride are a trio from Pheonix, Arizona, who play a style that incorporates different genres, some parts progressive, some parts thrash, some parts stoner and some parts just well, out there, and the opening song gives you a snippet of what they are all about.
There are ten songs on the record, their second full length album, and with bassist Ryan Arnold on vocals, brother Logan on guitar and Adam Duplack on drums, they have a strange feel to their sound, but it feels innovative and fresh. “Priestess” gives a further account of the direction they are heading, with the rhythm being simple and straightforward, but I like to way the riff wraps around the composition. “Carni” has a more progressive feel to it, a bit more complex in structure, but a riff that bounces around and I don’t know why, I’m getting a touch of Primus from it.
I’m quite enjoying the way that the songs move around all over place, “Wrath” demonstrates this quality, others may disagree, but it has a kind of manic appeal, that you never know quite where it might lead. The riffs are generally all over the place, a sort of controlled chaos, which I admire them for doing at such an early part of their band life. The explosions continue with “Siren” and then we get a more sombre, slower affair with “Floating” which has a trippier feel to it, before “Shredder” sees them returning to their heavier side and bursting back into life with my favourite song on the album, and it has a quality riff halfway through.
The final three songs “Awaken”, the killer that is “Temptation” and “Into the Storm” demonstrate more flexibility across the band, and their determination to try new and exciting things in their musical journey. There’s a plethora of different sounds in “Awaken” that will excite people, riffs to get people off their seats in and decent bass lines, listen to “Temptation” for this, to keep the purists interested. It’s creative, and the trio have probably taken a few risks with the songs, but if they keep producing music of this quality, then they’ll be a name on the lips of many more people.
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