WARCORE serve up an angry, intense and animalistic slice of groovy Thrash Metal with their album "My War". Which is what you might expect, given their band and album name. Heavy yet catchy grooves populate most of the running time, with some great solos thrown into the mix too. A full listen to the album is most definitely required though, as most of the best moments come during the later songs.

Opening track "Rest In Peace", and those that immediately follow, provide all the ingredients that you would anticipate - frantic guitar lines and riffs, vocals delivered with plenty of intensity, and drums pounded into submission. Unfortunately though, the whole package just doesn't quite seem to click, meaning the listener is never truly hooked.

Things improve significantly though, as on "Suicide Of Life", the band begins to fire on all cylinders. An intro featuring a slower tempo and some clean guitar work make for a much more interesting song. Particularly enjoyable is how WARCORE build the sound before returning to a quieter atmosphere multiple times. There's also a great vocal hook!

The next songs all follow in a similar vein, making good use of changes in rhythm, speed and intensity. The seventh track, "As Fucked As Your Brain", is entertaining purely due to the subtlety of the title!

Throughout the album, the guitar solos really stand out. The instrumental sections on the whole provide rhythmic and textural changes that really stand out from the straight-up thrash intensity of the vocal passages. For this reason, "TrueMentals" is the most memorable track on the album, for the fact that it is a pure instrumental. It allows the guitars, bass and drums to really show the range that WARCORE's style can truly cover, without seeming out of place.

While the majority of the production is good, the vocals are often not up to scratch, sometimes getting lost in the mix. Making out the lyrics can be hard, and so it's sometimes difficult to strike up a connection with the song. However, during moments when the production is kinder to the vocals, it's evident that some good vocal hooks are put down throughout the album.

With "My War", if you can maintain interest through the first few songs, then a worthwhile listen comes to light during the second half of the record. WARCORE present more than enough enjoyable musical ideas and hooks that will draw you in - it is just unfortunate that the relatively weak vocals let down what would be an otherwise strong album.