I don't know if there is any other Thrash band left to reunite...Who else has been left? Maybe the next one will be Germany's SEMEN OF SATAN, who knows? Anyway, let's move to the review's thing which is no other than AT WAR and their new, third, album entitled Infidel.
I guess for the majority of our younger readers this name does not bring any memories. AT WAR was an American, Virginia-based, Thrash Metal band mainly known for their debut album, Ordered To Kill. It was released in year 1986 and they played a Thrash style much influenced by MOTORHEAD and VENOM. After two years' time they unleashed another full-length, Retaliatory Strike, which I personally found good enough, although in conversations I ever had with friends about it was considered as of lower class than the first LP.
After an eternity, AT WAR is here again and their influences and style remain the same. They are still close to MOTORHEAD and VENOM, only now the touch of the second band comes from the Cast In Stone-and-after period. This is it, influence modernization. Inside these nine songs we have gunpowder from battlefields, bombs and bullets in a Thrash way that will hardly leave pathetic feelings to any genre's friend and not only the older of the band's admirers.
I can't say that all these songs are in the same level, since some of them can be distinguished very easily. Assassins is a perfect beginner and D.R.I.'s Thrash Zone-era influences inside Semper Fi is something I liked a lot. The band plays dirty, many times they are close to HALLOW'S EVE and they know how to write good tunes with heavy and powerful solos. Surely tracks like Want You Dead or the MOTORHEAD-ish R.A.F. will offer pleasant headbanging inside an atmosphere full of whisky and M-16.
Infidel made me reminisce in a nice way. Maybe because of the Alex Perialas name in the production or the savage voice of Paul Arnold. It is not something super but surely you will have some good time while you listen to it. And, by the way: these bloody bastards WARFARE...where the fuck are they?