ALBUM REVIEW: The Earhammer Sessions – War Cloud

Live sessions are generally reserved for bonus tracks at the end of deluxe releases on studio albums, so for a band to release a full eight tracks as a standalone effort is a rather rare occurrence. That said, in a time where there’s more chance of Accrington Stanley FC winning the Premier League than gigs returning anytime soon, Earhammer Sessions, releasing on Friday via Ripple Music, might turn out to be a rather shrewd move by Oakland metallers WAR CLOUD. Having recently shut themselves away in Earhammer Studios and practically thrown away the key, the foursome have taken five songs from their eponymous 2017 debut and three from last year’s State of Shock and recorded them in a way that captures the energy from their live shows and brings it straight into your bedroom.

For much of the UK metal scene, a fond music festival scene is a group of friends sitting outside their tents, beers in hand, the sun setting and a small speaker in the middle playing a ton of classic tunes. WAR CLOUD have that image down to a tee with this collection. From the moment Vulture City kicks in, they sound like they’ve been catapulted through a timewarp from the heart of 1980’s NWOBHM England into the present day. The riffs are big, the harmonies are bigger and, for the duration, there’s little more worth doing than throwing on a big leather jacket, cracking open a can and throwing the horns into the sky; the only slight deviation from this is Chopper Wired which, appropriately, conjures imagines of riding a cowboy-horned motorbike down the length of Route 66 without another vehicle insight or cloud anywhere on the horizon.

It’s the end of that particular song, though, where the penny fully drops on Earhammer Sessions. The track moves into a drum solo, which feels pointless until it segues perfectly into White Lightning, a track that captures MOTÖRHEAD brilliantly and throws in a dash of early METALLICA for good measure. But it’s here that one realises WAR CLOUD haven’t recorded each track individually – they’re playing through them all as they would a live set with no breaks in between takes. Immediately, the album goes up a level and the tunes don’t let off either. Closing song Striker follows the path of earlier track Give’r with its doff of the hat to Paul Di’Anno-fronted IRON MAIDEN, a blend of punk and metal that really helped the fledgling scene spread its wings at the turn of the 1980s. The instrumental Tomahawk goes even further, blending BLACK SABBATH stomp with a thrash-inspired middle and finishing with the two styles dancing in tandem.

This might just be a tie over whilst WAR CLOUD busy themselves with new material, and it’s certainly not a groundbreaking release by any stretch of the imagination, but it’s a hell of a lot of fun and does exactly what it set out to do, and that’s showcase what the band can do when they’re actually onstage in front of a rabid crowd. Nobody knows what state the music industry will be left in once this pandemic is over, but if bands like WAR CLOUD can pick up in a similar vein to this, the recovery time might be significantly shortened.

Rating: 7/10

Earhammer Sessions is set for release May 22nd via Ripple Music. 

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