Grief of War

A Mounting Crisis… As Their Fury Got Released (Prosthetic)
by Hansel Merchor

This thrash metal revival wave is starting to overflow the market. From great and vicious to average and the mediocre, and somewhere in the middle, headbanging in all their Bay Area glory, are Tokyo’s Grief of War. I mean, they barely make the grade, but they sound too complacent to rub elbows with bands as goods as Evile and Municipal Waste. In other words, had A Mounting Crisis… As Their Fury Got Released been unleashed back in 1991, it would’ve registered somewhere below Xentrix and right next to Devastation and on top of Re-Animator. Delivering no-frills, blunt, thrash metal completely void of nuances, Grief of War end up with a colorless and flat concoction that’s anything but eventful. The vocals are delivered in that generic, rageful fashion that was so in back then, and the music is sloppy, but without the character of Venom or Sodom. During the genre’s heyday, the greats got ahead through superior songwriting or exceptional chops, and, unfortunately, Grief of War don’t seem to possess either.
(www.prostheticrecords.com)