Album Review...Warhorses - Flap your Useless Wings

So, once again, I've had the opportunity to hear something that passed me by the first time around. This time its Warhorses; a heavy, hypnotic rock outfit from Detroit. This album's been around since 2009 and the band have a reputation for intense, engaging live shows.

After the short intro of 'Nothing Left to Burn' comes the alluring whisper of 'Terminal Station' a cool, slow burner that beats itself into a swaggering wall of guitars and drums. The sounds change to noisy and sonically charged on 'The Death Toll is Expected to Rise' a track that has all the hallmarks of something you know will take on a bigger life of its own played live.
Next, we get the excellent 'Dead Undone' a song that starts off reminiscent of Pavement's 'Motion Suggests' and then grows into a loud, wailing monster, complete with horns; its easily one of the albums best tracks. There are flourishes of psych on 'Bury Your Dead' the drum patterns beat with military style and precision over a country/psych guitar. '0' is a really heavy stoner number; it drones and pounds its way slowly over its weighty 12 minutes; a stark contrast to the punchy popping of the 2 minuter 'Neverland'. Therein lies the appeal of the LP; the styles are similar enough to maintain the albums tone, but not quite enough to pigeonhole a genre.  What you do get is sometimes dark and brooding, often hypnotic but always heavy.
'Flap your Useless' wings is another great example of an album that works better as a whole piece; it's a great late night kind of an album.  The atmosphere the band have managed to create lends itself well to being played loud.  Very loud.



Check out the Warhorses bandcamp page;  you can also stream the really cool EP  'Song of the Month', thats also worth checking out. There's a link for the track 'Crawl' at the end of this review.

Warhorses on Bandcamp

Warhorses on Facebook

Warhorses ReverbNation