ALBUM REVIEW: Ice War – Manifest Destiny

Here I review the new album from Heavy / Speed Metallers ICE WAR! The album is out now via Dying Victims Productions!

1. No Way Of Turning Back jumps right in with huge melodies and a nice upbeat old school pace. The guitars are somewhat flat sounding but nonetheless really catchy. The vocal performance is incredible powerful and stunning while the simplistic yet tight drums pound underneath. There is a really weird key discordance between the instruments that actually works surprisingly well to give it this dissonant NWOBHM feel mixed with some slightly punk tinged vocals. A really solid first piece.
2. Manifest Destiny follows up with more thrashy riffs, immediately grasping vocals and a really punchy 70s vibe. The melodic lead guitars come in once more, this time with a much more traditionally soaring feel to them, while the rest of the song creeps along in a cool progressive fashion the huge growing monolith of sound is a huge step forward from the previous track. The monstrously anthemic feel of the piece is incredibly fun and catchy, certainly a good one for old school Heavy Metal fans! Great work.
3. I Would Die For You fires out more punky rhythms with groove and punch to spare. The traditional Metal and Punk elements work together in a really unique manner, with few bands being comparable to this in a directly inherent way. The closest examples I could give would be Satan or Witchfynde, but neither are quite as punky as this. This song was pretty cool and followed nicely from the others with more fairly memorable and anthemic material. Good stuff!
4. Edge Of The World brings in more melancholic sounding lead guitars over simple yet effective rhythm and drum sections with some nice upbeat groove to it. The slightly more sombre touches to the song allow for the grinding menace of the bands more epic and hard hitting soundscapes to make even more impact, much like the 2nd track this piece seems to be infinitely more varied that the 1st and 3rd, giving us some totally epic musical performance in true old school Heavy Metal fashion. An incredible song.
5. Light Shine On blasts us with more glistening melodies and grinding bass with some lighter drums that all work together well to build into the furiously catchy opus to follow. The spacious feeling of the song has a really stunning livelihood to it that is both epic and fun. There is a nice pace to the song that changes into some stunning soaring melodic work plentifully with the punk influences coming through with total strength in the chorus (with a gorgeous Michale Grave era Misfits feeling to it). This track was really fun throughout and certainly one of the stronger ones.
6. Ride Alone gives us more totally NWOBHM worshipping upbeat riffs with some glorious vocals soaring over them and paced well with the excellent drum and bass work. Certainly some influence from Iron Maiden is showing through on this one, which is certainly not a bad thing. With plenty excellent lyrics to match the huge anthemic piece throughout. The guitar solo was by far the most pleasant one yet with a slower tempo build to it. Nice work on this one.
7. I Have No Name comes straight in with crawling scales on the guitars and slower drums that allow the atmosphere to build into this catchy and powerful piece of epic old school material. This track definitely has an interesting mix of influences on it that results in a relatively unique and groovy piece of music. The simplicity certainly makes the music incredibly digestible with nothing obnoxious or unnecessary occurring without need.
8. The Labyrinth closes the album with faster paced rhythm sections that a really punchy with some eerie leads over the top. The kicking rock n roll groove of the track is certainly an awesome way to end things with a bang while the lead guitars and vocals work excellently together to create this fantastic haunting melody. The bass work is really strong on this piece too with such warm undertones being added, while still favouring simpler touches for it. Fantastic closing piece.

This is some pretty unique material with a really cool old school vibe, mixing NWOBHM, Speed Metal and even some punk elements. Some tracks (such as the 1st and 3rd are much better than others) but still we get a nicely varied release. I really enjoyed the material and my only true criticism is that some people may find the discourse between instruments jarring, but other than that I think this is a really solid release and a great foundation to work from. -7/10