Warsenal - Demo (2012)

When I think of Quebec, Warsenal's home ground, I tend to think of Voivod, several amazing black metal bands and the French soldier, Louis-Joseph de Montcalm. I'd best start thinking about thrash metal though, since that's Warsenal's game and this is what they play.

Consisting of three young thrashers, Francis Labine (bass), Antoine Turcotte (drums) and Mathieu Rondeau (guitar/vocals) this is their three song debut demo. As the opening riffs of 'Hit 'N' Run' discharge from my speakers and I hear Mathieu's shrieking scream I'm instantly brought back to Megadeth's first album, 'Killing Is My Business...and Business Is Good,' as well as various other early 80's thrashers. The song itself is a darkly humorous tale about running down pedestrians with a great deal of energy behind it as well as some instantly catchy riffs, a decent solo and even a nifty little bass guitar part too.

Armed and dangerous and you better hide

'Unstoppable' hits hard with a great opening solo and charging lead, and with lyrics centered around the bands own commanding and eventual dominance its quite a band anthem with an unexpected bass solo mid way through. 'Wars' is the final song on the demo and as an actual anti-war themed number it has more of a sense of seriousness behind it, but still retains the fun and catchiness that the whole demo already displayed.

As already mentioned this is on par with early Megadeth as well 'Kill 'em All' era Metallica and 'Show No Mercy' Slayer tend to come to mind through these songs. Mathieu uses a raspy snarly sort of vocal delivery that sounds like a strange mixture between Dave Mustaine and Mille Petrozza, which means it might not work for everyone and since his voice is sort of high in the mix it may make for an awkward listen initially. I have to also point out that the CD version that the band sent me is produced decently with audible bass lines and all, though the actual volume is quite low, which is weird since the song on their Facebook profile sounds quite different. So, it could simply be some sort of burning error on CDr. Who knows.

Nevertheless as a debut demo this is admirable enough, especially since the members look to be quite young. I figure if Mathieu works on the vocals, Antoine adds a little double bass to his drum work and the band finds a slight bit more of their own style they could definitely develop into something special in a few years.