Originally written by Chris Redar
So Steve Tucker’s throwing his hat back into the ring with Warfather, a multinational death metal cavalcade featuring such stunning pseudonyms as…Deimos! Avgvstvs! Armatura!…and…that’s it, actually. I’ve got to tell you, I’m half-tempted to just review these amazingly strange promo pictures featuring the members of the band sporting their best post-apocalyptic DM apparel and flanked by nearly a dozen gun-wielding steampunk women. They are just priceless. Oddly enough, no one in the band is sporting any kind of ballistic weapon, only arms of the bladed variety. There’s no telling what their battle strategy is, making this entire cavalry a goddamn wild card. Oh, what wacky adventures will this band of misfits get into?
From the sounds of Orchestrating the Apocalypse, these adventures are going to be of the ambitious yet overextended variety, and they’re going to end up disjointed and somewhat conclusion-free as a result. Tucker deploys a slightly off-time delivery in most of his performance (most noticeably on “The Shifting Poles”, seeming a full half-step behind the band for the latter half of the song) that is rather disorienting. In fact, most of the performances feel just a little bit off. It’s not the most pleasant thing in the world to not quite be able to mentally comprehend what is ultimately a 4/4 signature because no one in the band seems to be playing the same song.
And that goddamn snare. Is Deimos playing a brick wall? He has to be playing a brick wall. There’s no way something this distracting and unpleasant is a snare drum. Between that and the seemingly random ride just kind of peppered randomly throughout most of these tracks, the entire percussion section sounds less than finished. And yes, it’s that big of a deal. Orchestrating the Apocalypse plays like two different albums. There’s the finished version with the guitar/bass/vocal tracks, and then a demo version of the drums thrown in. It’s detrimental, to say the least, considering the guitars range from serviceable to top-notch. “Ashes and Runes”, for example has these two nearly back-to-back solos that simmer, and then cook. This particular track also features the first real blast of momentum on the album. The only problem with that? It’s the penultimate track.
One can’t help but wonder if this was rushed for some reason. There’s this lingering notion that, silly lyrical content aside, this was supposed to be high-concept death metal ala Tucker’s more accomplished Morbid Angel material. And while it finishes on a high note (“We Are the Wolves” is a hell of a closer), the long string of overreaching but under-executed songs on the way to the finish line seem to branch off of the main path and find dead ends. I’m curious enough to keep Warfather in mind to see what they come up with as a follow-up, but Orchestrating the Apocalypse is most likely getting jettisoned.
