Ah GWAR, this takes me back to the good old days of watching Headbangers Ball late at night on MTV (The 90s, back when the M stood for music, and the channel actually played videos), watching the classic "Meat Sandwich" video which usually aired around 2am. GWAR is back and GWAR is GWAR, that's the best way to describe Virginia's Thrash monsters (literally) newest release, it's been 3 years since their last album, and this is the band's first release since 1987 without the Flattus Maximus character which was retired after Corey Smoot's unfortunate passing in 2011.

So what can you expect from "Battle Maximus"? As I said, GWAR is GWAR and that's exactly what you can expect from their latest offering. This band has never really tried to reinvent the wheel, they've always stayed the course, and that's what works perfectly well for them. The album opens with a 2 minute long intro, appropriately titled "Intro", an acoustic opening which for some reason gave me a bit of a MANOWAR flashback, which coupled with the lyrics made me chuckle, "Madness At The Core of Time" is your classic Punk infused Thrash we've grown accustomed to from GWAR. As a matter of fact, that's what the whole album sounds like, it's fun, it's energetic, it's Punk, it's Thrash, it's amusing, it's GWAR. There are obviously a few exceptions to the rule, "Mr. Perfect" for example opens very slowly, almost Doomy until it lines up with the rest of the album about two minutes in. Another such moment is the slower "Falling", but that's about it as far as tempo changes. All in all, there's little originality on this record, the band haven't reinvented themselves, they didn't even try, and why would they want to? They're coming up on 30 years of sounding like GWAR, why would they change a working formula?

Bottom line is that GWAR fans will absolutely love this album, and it is indeed a fun record, but in all honesty, there's not much here for people who aren't fans of the band, a good, not great GWAR album.