If you couldn’t work out who Sweden’s Warhawk sound like in two seconds then why the hell are you listening to metal. Go on try it with one of their tracks on their Bandcamp page or YouTube before continuing to read on.
So, did you try that? Well if you did I expect you to have said Motörhead in less than five seconds once you heard the opening to any of their songs on this second album or indeed their debut ‘Pray For War’. For some that might be enough for you to stop reading and go check them out, it would have been for me for sure. Lucky for me I received an actual CD for review though how the graphics designer expected me to read the lyrics which are red on a black background without an electron microscope is beyond me. It is probably the smallest font size I’ve ever seen in a CD booklet. I wondered to myself whether there are any metal fans in the world that do not like Motörhead whether from the earliest Hawkwind inspired tunes to the classic three piece of Lemmy, Fast Eddie and Philthy up to the band’s latter day era as a four piece, if so I suspect you are in an extremely small minority and gave up reading this review about four sentences or so ago.
Everything about ‘Dambuster’ reeks of Motörhead and whilst there are plenty of bands that are influenced by the band very few actually take on the challenge of trying to emulate without coming across as a covers band of which there are plenty of those as you can imagine. Lemmy always said his band was a rock ‘n’ roll band and the same can be applied to Warhawk which begins with a riff that is slick and saturated in that raw primal filth of 80s heavy metal on ‘Bombraid’. With clean vocals added this is such an easy album to listen as the band use Motörhead as a foundation and not a textbook to copy from adding various other old acts such as Venom and Tank but also a healthy dose of punk and crust as the opener even has a piano piece within in that is straight from rock ‘n’ roll itself.
Bass riff infestation starts ‘Cut Me Loose’ and would be one Lemmy would be very proud of himself if he had come up with it. One line chorus lyrics is enough to have you singing along as the song has similarities to the ‘Ace Of Spades’ album and to some degree ‘Iron Fist’ due to the guitar sound. Speeding up is ‘Skullet R ’n’ R Machine’ which adds in some double bass but loosely so as the riffing hurtles along and is sure to send crowds into a frenzy as I would love to see this band live. I absolutely adored ‘Please Don’t Go, it is a heads down headbanging ripper tinged with a slight crust influence to craft that filth riddled toning old school UK heavy metal bands had in early 80s and these days bands like Hellripper and Midnight use to great effect.
A big change in pace and style appears with ‘Claws Out’ which whilst heavily similar to Motörhead slows things down hugely for some Venom like noise especially with the shift in vocal tone as well. Hugely catchy and addictive the title track smashes into the listener without ceremony capitalising on the swift riffing but also escalating the song into the upper echelons of tunefulness that you cannot fail to be carried along with. What do you expect ‘Hounds of Hell’ to sound like, it is a face melting tune matched by its pacing but also the high end riffing that pays due homage to Fast Eddie of which a lot of the guitar work is similar to. ‘Dags Att Dra’ is fantastic, the pulsing bass riff sends it down a grimy crust styling but with lashings of charisma as the albums ends with the longest tune ‘Hawks Of War’ at over four minutes unlike the others being around the three minute mark. Yet another awesome bass riff begins the song and here we get a slightly more elongated stance in the structuring that reminded me of ‘Bomber’ era Motörhead. For all my banging on about their influence Warhawk are unique in that they write pure heavy metal songs, no tainting with experimental trickery, no dilution with unnecessary instrumentation, it is pure headbanging mania for those who would like to partake. Very cool stuff indeed!
(9/10 Martin Harris)
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