24. March 2025
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Media Review

Enforced – War Remains

Florian Buechtingby Florian Buechting

Enforced - War Remains

Enforced - War Remains
4.2

Rating

 4.2/5

Flyctory.com Pros

  • Very straight and good listen
  • High musical quality

War Remains is the third album of the US band Enforced. The press kit promises 32 minutes of aggressive, no frills thrash! – which is likely frightening enough to make mainstream music lovers run away from this album – and mouthwatering the souls of metalheads. I had a listen of this 28th April 2023 release.

 

Enforced – About The Artists

Enforced have been founded in Richmond, Virginia, in 2016. They act as a quintet. Knox Colby is the vocalist of the band, accompanied by Will Wagstaff and Zach Monahan on the guitars, bassist Ethan Gensurowsky and drummer Alex Bishop. Colby, Wagstaff and Monahan are founding members of the band. Gensurowsky and Bishop joined in 2018 and thus one year before the band released the debut album At the Walls. Their second full-length release is the 2021 Kill Grid, which drew more attention and also received significantly better reviews.

Enforced – War Remains – Track by Track

The ten track album lasts 34 minutes.

1. Aggressive Menace

Energetic, violent, aggressive – the US boys don’t give you any chance to have an easy and slow start into their 2023 album. They rock with full force from the very first second. Simply a full force kick in the butt.

2. The Quickening

Enforced don’t even give you a chance to breathe between the song. Aggressive Menace does not come with a fade out, The Quickening starts hot right thereafter. This way of drumming done by Bishop just cannot be good for your health. Luckily they grant him a break in the middle of the song… For less than five minutes.

3. Hanged by My Hand

Even though is a slight touch of an intro at Hanged By My Hand, the band is finally continuing on with their style: Ultra-high-speed metal sounds driven by the guitarists and moderated by Knox Colby on the microphone position. Premium soundtrack for your next head-banging.

4. Avarice

Avarice does take some rather slower parts – but they just feel like a short break before the US-Americans fire the metal afterburner again. Especially the middle part of this song is a blast.

5. War Remains

The title track of the album is rather in the middle of the record. Knox stated that for him war is one of the linking elements of humankind, from past to present. Many songs of the album are comparably short – this one is only one out of two which are longer than four minutes. This leaves some more space to develop different sounds and themes within the song.

6. Mercy Killing Fields

The sixth song (which is just missing the four minute mark, by the way), is one of the gems of the album. A beautiful work of metallic dialectic, which is beautifully changing between aggressive and slightly more thoughtful sections.

7. Nation of Fear

After two longer listens, the next two track are rather compact experiences again. Nation of Fear is daring to start with a 40 second instrumental intro, before it takes over the typical signature sound of the War Remains album.

8. Ultra-Violence

The song is called Ultra-Violence – what do you expect? Exactly, that’s what you get! The metalspeedometer is at its limits again. Fun song, which has been released beforehand.

9. Starve

The second last song Starve is another single release by Enforced. A very thrash and punk-alike listen. The bass drum is stomping at a high frequency again (not too surprisingly, I guess…).

10. Empire

The album closes with the fast marching Empire. A song just in line with the whole album. A slow finale would simply disturb when you listen to this death/thrash firework in loop mode.

 

Enforced – War Remains – Spotify

Here is War Remains on Spotify:

 

Enforced – War Remains – My View

The album does not have many highlights – and that’s its key strength. Sounds weird? Enforced just deliver a steadily good sound, a lot of power, good songs and plots. A very nice listen at a high quality level. No tops, but no flops as well.

 

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