Wargasm (USA) - Why Play Around? (1988)^{Release ID: 20465}

My initial take was that this is a great example of underground 80s thrash metal that deserves to be held up as an equal to contempories like Testament and Exodus. The opening couple of tracks are pretty good thrashers, with Revenge having a truly memorable chorus to rival anything around at the time (despite the track dragging on a little bit too long) and both tracks having decent riffs,  In fact, I would suggest that the whole album is all about the riffs as singer Bob Mayo has a nice rasping delivery, but is restricted in range and the lead guitar work is too understated, almost to the point of non-existence bar a couple of notable exceptions (Revenge again being one such). It even seems a couple of times like a solo is coming, but then one never materialises and they just keep playing the riff over and over. And therein lies the problem - when an album is primarily about the riffs they need to be absolutely top-knotch and those on Why Play Around? aren't really that, never accelerating much beyond mid-pace and never leaping out and grabbing you by the throat. So my initial rose-tinted view was soon dispelled because, basically, that is all there is to the album. This is especially problematic when taken in context, with a plethora of death/thrash hybrids abounding in the underground at this time and starting to break out into the wider metal world, when these kind of plodding riffs just weren't cutting the mustard anymore and it's easy to see why Wargasm got left behind.

Ultimately Why Play Around? doesn't really offer enough to hold the attention over repeated listens, although for a quick punching-the-air headbanging workout it is fine. Throw in a couple of redundant interludes that add absolutely nothing and we are on a downward spiral really. Essentially this is nothing more than a footnote in thrash metal history for good reason and if any of the tracks other than Revenge popped up on the monthly playlist then I doubt they would raise much of an eyebrow from me.

Despite missing their stop and staying on the bus for too long enough for them to ever get back in time for the heyday of 80's thrash metal, Wargasm still made a good go of trying to make a relevant thrash metal record in 1988.  There's no use in pretending there is much of anything new here from a point in time when we had already had the peak outputs from the genre.  Lost in a landscape of metal that was now growing at a rate that Wargasm could not keep up with they could not even justifiably be considered a revivalist act by the time Why Play Around? dropped.  However, there is still lots to enjoy here.

Wargasm certainly knew their stuff.  That mid-paced, choppy and rhythmical riffing with the stabs of melody gets the head nodding along suitably quick enough by the time I am just a few minutes into the record.  Despite the drums sounding a little bit too far back in the mix they are still making sufficient enough contribution for me to enjoy them, but where's the bass gone guys??  The riffs and vocals do dominate the mix but the bass here is given as a little regard as it famously was on And Justice For All... released in the very same year as this.  As a result of this bass-less sound the album struggles to generate any presence for me overall.  It sounds more like 3 guys jamming in someone's garage and they just did not know anyone who had a bass guitar.

Rampant tracks such as album highlight Revenge really cannot be rescued by the lead wizardry of Rich Spillberg alone.  They just need more of a complete band performance (or complete contribution all round) in order to elevate them beyond this sense of lacking impetus.  Add to this that I find Rob Mayo's vocal style to be a bit of an odd fix for a thrash metal band.  It has a crude melodicism to it that lacks any screech factor to add some dimension to it and as such I find his performance to be quite flat over the course of the record. I sense it is supposed to come across as punky but I just cannot quite marry it with the rest of the sound here.

Criticism aside, Why Play Around? is still a solid enough thrash metal record in terms of being a simple plug in and play type of album.  If we were to put any track from this album in an 80's only thrash playlist and leave it playing, it would not standout as being an inappropriate inclusion.  Unfortunately, it would not standout as being anything exceptional either.

I feel that I’ll probably be in the extreme minority of metalheads in that I have previously had some experience with Boston thrash metallers Wargasm (who include two members of Boston thrash/heavy/power metallers Meliah Rage whose first couple of albums were fairly popular in the late 1980's & early 1990's). I picked up their 1988 debut album “Why Play Around?” through a tape trader back in the early 1990's & gave it several spins before dumping it on the top of the immense pile of material that I found to be pretty enjoyable but not engaging enough to warrant a return visit. I can recall very few of the details of that experience now but needless to say that it didn’t result in me being encouraged to investigate Wargasm’s subsequent releases so I haven’t gone into this revisit with much hope of finding an undiscovered gem.

By 1988 the thrash scene had well & truly matured. Prior to then you’d find a large portion of the more underground releases to be extremely raw & unpolished but by the time the last couple of the years of the decade rolled around there was a lot more class & capability being shown by your average thrash exponent given that the Big Four had managed to cross over into the mainstream to an extent with their more recent material. “Why Play Around?” is one of these records in that it’s professionally produced & executed which sees it being given every chance to impress your average fan & it does so to a reasonable extent too it has to be said. The riffs are tight & thrashy, the lead guitar work is surprisingly capable for such an underground band & the vocals are delivered with confidence.

But the thing with a band like Wargasm is that there’s simply not much to talk about. They take a mid-paced approach to their thrash for the most part with the majority of the riffage coming across as pretty generic & overly basic. It’s hard to pin point the issue with the vocals as they’re certainly serviceable but I’d hazard to suggest that they’re simply lacking a bit of x factor &, despite the fact that the seven proper songs steer well of anything that could be considered to be subpar, it’s rare that they take me close to the upper echelon as far as aggression & energy go. Instead, I find myself perennially sitting in a beige room where everything looks & feels easy on the eye but nothing really encourages me to leave my seat. The couple of highlight tracks “Undead” & “Humanoid” invariably occur when Wargasm throw their shackles aside for a while & thrash out a bit more so it’s a shame that they didn’t embrace their raucous side more often to tell you the truth. The two interludes also offer very little of any substance & could easily have been omitted without too much fuss given the 44 minute run time.

At the end of the day, any major music scene will inevitably have talented also-rans as not everyone can crack the big time. Unfortunately for Wargasm they’ve found themselves coming too late in the game for a record like “Why Play Around?” to register much of a blip on the thrash radar, despite the fact that it’s a mildly enjoyable & fairly capable example of the subgenre. You’ll easily be able to pick up on the band’s wide array of influences across the tracklisting with any number of prominent bands featuring at any one time but it’s rare that they find themselves competing on the same level as a Testament, Overkill or even Xentrix. Unfortunately Wargasm simply lack the sophistication required to stand out in a market that was well & truly saturated by that stage but you can't say that they don't perform their roles admirably nonetheless. In fairness, I never really found myself considering a poor score for Wargasm here but it’s fairly telling that I also never threatened to award them a higher one either as there’s just not enough pizzazz on offer to see “Why Play Around?” differentiating itself from the masses.