Hands up who can name five metal bands from Romania? Yep thought so, although anyone reading from Romania may well be sitting there with a smug expression on their face but that is sort of expected. Metal Archives lists the grand total of 249 of them and whilst every self respecting metal fan should have had the words Negura Bunget rolling off their tongue before coming to a grinding halt, the country is not particularly prolific with household named metal bands.
Welcome Warganism who used to be called Dies Irae before changing there name after probably deciding they did not want to incur a day of wrath from the similarly named Polish troopers. Apparently they started out as a black metal band recording first LP ‘Gargoyles’ in 98, got a fair bit of attention and played hundreds of shows before going on hiatus until 2006. Not sure of any concept or ideas behind ‘Centipede’ but it does take off down may different paths and twists and turns with a lot of different musical ideas.
‘The Strangest Thing’ has a nice sound to it with guitars jangling and the gruff bearlike vocals of Radu Iordache growling in. This is only for a moment as a cleanly sang chorus hits and you are really none to sure how the two styles are going to coagulate together. There is a good grasp of melody here and I am slightly reminded of Loits with the gruff vocals and this is something that also comes to mind with many of the songs here, which are prone to follow a black n’ roll sort of mindset. The barbarian cleave behind ‘Stay’ suggests that it is thumping its gauntleted fist down on the table but this is not particularly angry stuff, more melodious and likely to break down into gentler rhythms with progressive tendencies. ‘Haven’ era Dark Tranquillity also spring to mind a bit with keyboard melody on ‘Live The Unique’ and the marriage of styles here as a whole works very well especially when next track ‘The Words’ opens like a particularly angry Samael.
Favourite here is ‘To Forget’ with its “marching on” vocals doing just what they suggest as the music stomps forward with some eclectic guitar signatures also making their mark. By complete contrast ‘Envy’ shows a completely different side to the band, more acoustic musically and the clean vocals sounding slightly reminiscent of a softly sung System Of A Down if anything. There is a bonus of ‘Shadow Boxing’ which was actually released by the group as a single and has a bit of a rampant tribal feel to it with some interesting guitar and drumming arrangements. This also gets a keyboard futurist sounding remix further expanding on the groups interesting ideas. Already having played at home with Sepultura, Samael, Napalm Death and Behemoth the idea is that Warganism want to get attention a bit further afield with Centipede and good luck to them as it is certainly an interesting album, deserving of a wider audience.
http://www.warganism.ro
http://www.myspace.com/warganismband
