It's hard not to be enticed by a band named BEASTWARS, especially if you dig genres like Sludge, Doom, or Stoner, so I picked up these lads new full length album "The Death Of All Things" to check out and see if the album could talk to the beast in me. Well, that was a bit of an exaggeration, but you get the jizz.

The album starts with a trippy song in "Call To The Mountain". The pale guttural vocals of Matt Hyde make an instant impact on you as a listener for its sheer uniqueness. The guitar work gets a little slower as the song progresses and leans more Sludgy and the band adds in some low tempo melodic parts in the middle, and most of the melodic parts are very intelligently used to build up the tension to bring back the heavier parts again with absolute ferocity and sharpness. "Devils Of Last Night" is a much thicker Sludgy song with more insane vocals that can be almost be described as clean Death metal vocals, but there is clean vocals in the melodic parts of the song, making it an interesting mixture of total heaviness and total melody in different sections of the song. The few extra seconds of melodic parts here give that much more meat and ability to form an impact for the heavier parts making it an interesting song structures being formed. With slow trippy guitar work, "Some Sell Thier Souls" tries to bring in some slow chaotic sound to the song. The trippy feel of the song gets more and more impactful on the listener as the song progresses, but it's sad that it has an ordinary ending, and not something of greater magnitude as I had expected. The tension builds on with each passage of the song in "Witches" and has a great atmospheric sound to it, and can take the listen to a different planet even though it's just over 4 minutes.

On reflecting of the album's sound at this point of the album, I feel like I have a bit of mixed feelings about this album. While it has some great mix of melodic and heavy parts and the nasty guttural vocals along with the thick guitar sound does bring in some great moments, but there is a sense of monotony to the main riff in all the songs, which in genres like Sludge and Doom usually should be and is an advantage, but somehow seems to be a bummer here, especially even with the shorter song structures of these songs. Moving on, "Black Days" is an excellent fast paced trippy Stoner song that will get you headbanging anywhere you are. In fact, I think it is one of the better songs on offer in this album. "Holy Man" combines the fast paced Stoner goodness of "Black Days", and adds more trippy effect and noise to it, making it another excellent song on offer here. "Disappear" has some insanely cool vocals and with the help of some Sludgy guitar work, you have a mid-tempo chaotic juicy Sludge Metal to drool into. "The Devil Took Her" is an excellent acoustic slow smoothing song with equally good lazy vocals to back it up. The blues influence can be felt in real in this song, and the guitar strumming is simply impeccable even though the song is just over 2 minutes. The album ends with another slow song, but this one is a bit heavier and trippy too. "The Death Of All Things" is 4 minutes full of painful screaming vocals that pretty much sums up this album - trippy and painful in nature.

"The Death Of All Things" has so many things working for it, but a few things not. While the sound, the vocals and the use of melody and heaviness is pro; the sense of monotony in some of the songs, especially in the first half and also the shorter songs in genre like Sludge hasn't really worked as well as I wish it did. The album also at times tests the patience of the listener, thanks to it monotonous nature. But make no mistake, this is an excellent album of Sludge Metal with shades of Stoner and Doom all over it. Nearing a decade of existence by next year, BEASTWARS have made a fine album worthy of your time, especially if you connoisseurs of the aforementioned genres, otherwise, I am afraid you may have difficulties in appreciating what's on offer here.Final Score: 7/10