Review Summary: The finest effort of the only other good Christian thrash band besides Tourniquet, Weapons Of Our Warfare is a fast, aggressive and entertaining aural assault.
Christian Metal is generally considered a very dubious area of music, but some bands have made it work. Two reasonably well known examples,
Tourniquet and
Mortification, have had some very positively considered work in their time, which may well be because there was minimal "Christian" influence on the actual music, which was aggressive and technical in both bands. Deliverance aren't quite so well known as either of those bands but have had a number of strong releases up to
Learn, from which the band tailed off into irrelevance.
Weapons Of Our Warfare is probably the best recognized of these albums, with aggressive song writing and riffs taking the lead, resulting in what is also the band's best album.
The instrumentation on this album isn't exceptional but works fine for the songs present. The guitar work is a fairly typical thrash affair, with tight and technical riffs featured throughout, while a mix of melodic and chaotic,
Slayer-like leads are featured, resulting in an entertaining and competent package. Bass work is not especially audible, but is competent and tight to the guitars and drums, leaving little room for error. The drums are tight and fast, with a mixture of double bass and more traditional thrash beats present, keeping a solid basis for the rest of the music with a lot of its own technical merit, especially in the fills. Vocals on the album are consistently strong, as vocalist Jimmy P. Brown II uses his impressive vocal range to great effect, along with simple but entertaining thrash shouts, in a style most easily comparable to
Helstar vocalist James Rivera.
After the rather musical intro track
Supplication, which features a somewhat naive spoken word section prior to some melodic guitar work, the furious
This Present Darkness kicks into action, with some fast and technical riffs opening the song at full momentum before it shifts to a slower and heavier set of riffs before its lightning fast solo section, ultimately working out to be an early album highlight. The title track follows, providing mid tempo riffs that keep the song moving at a groovy and entertaining pace, with a strong mix of melody and aggression being provided, resulting in another early highlight.
Solitude opens with a series of technical riffs before slowing into some mid paced sections that prove entertaining throughout its duration, with a series of harmony sections setting the track at a consistently entertaining pace with a great solo placed roughly halfway into the song that keeps it fresh.
Flesh And Blood is ultimately the best track on the album, with some excellent riffs, providing the song with a great deal of drive, while a series of dynamic shifts helping to keep the song entertaining while a pair of excellent solos make it all the more enjoyable. Ballad
23, while cheesy, does provide some great solos and riffs, in a fashion akin to Welcome Home, Sanitarium, which ultimately makes it one of the more memorable and best written tracks (at least musically).
Slay The Wicked opens at a groovy mid tempo with some catchy lead guitar work, before once again breaking into an excellent guitar solo, becoming another album highlight.
Greetings Of Death follows it, slaying all your family members as it opens with a brutally fast, Slayer-ish opener that tears out the throats of all unprepared listeners, before providing some slower lines and another good solo. Closer
If We Faint Not proves to be slightly weaker than the preceding track, but still provides infectious, groovy riffs that keep it strong throughout.
Ultimately there aren't many issues with this album, as it features a good variety of song writing styles, along with great riffs and solos. However, the album does falter somewhat with
Bought By Blood,which, while technical and accomplished, doesn't quite bring the momentum of the other tracks. Some of the tracks do also drag a little bit towards the end of their duration, such as
Solitude and the title track, but generally the tracks prove to be consistently entertaining, quite a feat considering the rather varied paces found across the album. Overall this is yet another entertaining thrash album that should appeal to any thrash listener so long as you're willing to deal with the Christian lyrics, which while naive in overall slant, prove to be fairly well written.
Recommended Tracks:
Flesh And Blood
This Present Darkness
Greetings Of Death
Slay The Wicked
Weapons Of Our Warfare
Solitude
