ENFORCED
ENFORCED "War Remains"
By Dr. Abner Mality
This band's mastery of its chosen genre of music is so complete that words fail me. There's a pretty good case to be made that no band has ever typified thrash metal more than ENFORCED...yes, including SLAYER and KREATOR. Their last effort "Kill Grid" blew my eyeballs out of my skull with sheer thrash ferocity and now "War Remains" is here to destroy whatever brain cells weren't incinerated by its predecessor.
This is utter thrash perfection delivered in just over a half hour. Every note and every second on this rabid sumbitch means something. When singer Knox Colby goes "UNNH!" in "Hanged By My Hand" and the speed kicks in, I can see a packed crowd of hundreds transformed into a multi-cellular organism bent on destruction. There are many such moments here. ENFORCED are masters of both the mid-paced thrash chug and the insanely violent speed blast. When tunes like "Avarice" and "Empire" morph from slower chords along the lines of "South of Heaven" and "Seasons In the Abyss" to hyper-aggressive thrash, the result is absolutely devastating. Each and every time. Some tracks like "The Quickening" and "Ultra-Violence" don't bother with chug at all and just go straight for the throat. And it kills!
The amazing thing about "War Remains" is its purity. That extends to Colby's ferociously angry vocals, which are not even close to death metal growls and yet more brutal than the vast majority of them. This guy has HATE in his voice. Kudos also are due to drummer Alex Bishop, who is just a machine. In the vicious battlefield of modern metal, ENFORCED are blood-soaked, grimy victors ready to claim their spoils!