Review by UnhinderedbyTalent for Wargasm (USA) - Why Play Around? (1988)
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.