Warish – Next To Pay
Release Date: 30th April 2021
Label: Riding Easy Records
Pre-Order/Pre-Save
Genre: Grunge, Punk-Metal.
FFO: Nirvana, Misfits, Distillers.
Review By: Kenny Newall
When listening to San Diego’s Warish you’d be forgiven for thinking you’d found a forgotten Sub Pop band from back in the day when Alternative meant what it meant. However this band probably weren’t alive when Grunge broke through with Nevermind and Ten, but the influence is clear, especially Nirvana and more especially Cobain. But Misfits are in the mix too and sophomore release, Next To Pay leans more punk than the Down In Flames debut.
Like most punk the songs are more about impact than length and the best of them have it, but like a lot of punk, diversity isn’t much admired and while Nirvana sang about School, they could also play Dumb. Or Polly. Or Heart-Shaped Box. Warish, though are a Tourettes and Territorial Pissings style onslaught with no apologies and no recess and while I’d like more dynamics when I’m sat here in front of my keyboard with my headphones on, I know this is an album built for the car. And while the songs are stylistically the same, they do have enough hooks and melodic bursts to keep you entertained.
On the downside, there aren’t really any great riffs to launch the air guitars and at times, well, quite a lot of the times the vocals ape Cobain’s style, but don’t have his emotion, especially his despair. There was a reason he was screaming. Oh, and the album cover is a bit shit.
But Warish are a band with a future methinks, though hopefully not as bleak a future as the lyrics paint. They might not give the serious critics much to flex their thesauruses about, but for an idiot like me, I’m entertained, I’m happy and that’s all I need.
(3 / 5)
