Melodic Death Metal Isn't Dead - A Review of Warmen's Here for None

A whopping nine years after its preceding regular studio album First of the Five Elements, Finnish melodic death metal quintet Warmen is back in full strength with sixth studio album Here for None. This record offers nine regular songs and a cover track for a concise total running time of thirty-seven minutes. The presence of a band such as Warmen is more important now than ever before in times when genre flagships such as Children of Bodom have ceased to exist and bands like In Flames have moved away from their roots.

Warmen deliver the goods in style with opening anthem ''Warmen Are Here for None''. The song features atmospheric yet playful keyboard passages, guitar play finding the perfect balance between anger and melody, pumping bass guitar sounds, energetic and tight drumming and rough vocals incarnating a provocative attitude indicating that this band does what it thinks is right and doesn't care about anything else. The aggressive lyrics blend in perfectly. The authentic, organic and raw production symbolizes the cherry atop the cake for this new band anthem that should be blasted relentlessly in concert.

While the opening tune is the record's strongest track, the other songs are only a notch below this excellent quality and manage to entertain from start to finish. This album represents consistency at its best as it doesn't aim for changes, experiments or progressive details as other genre bands do. What you get here are thirty-seven minutes of atmospheric, energetic and tight melodic death metal at its best. Only closing cover song ''Dancing with Tears in My Eyes'' is a slight disappointment as it fails to reinvent the melodic pop song with courage, grit and intellect as it just sounds like any other tune of this record and fails to grasp the melancholy that made the original tune so gripping.

At the end of the day, Warmen's Here for None is a return to form for the Finnish melodic death quintet and one of the strongest genre releases in recent memory. What genre fans all around the world need now are concerts from this band across the globe. After the tragic demise of Children of Bodom and years of pandemic lethargy, the time has come to bang heads, raise fists and make new friends in circle pits.

Final Rating: 80%