Band:	Wyruz
Album:	Fire At Will
Style:	Death metal, Thrash metal
Release date:	April 13, 2012
A review by:	Lemski

01. Terminal
02. Dead World
03. Shellshock
04. The Eyes Of Your Killer
05. Fuel The Fire
06. Heartless
07. Psychiatric Ward
08. Fire At Will
09. The General
10. In Command
11. B.I.B.

Norwegian thrash? Cool!

Wait, wait, just American thrash. False Alarm.

Despite hailing from Hamar, Norway, Wyruz's bio boasts of American influences, i.e. Metallica, Slayer, and Death, the culmination of which results in a (un)remarkably safe and accessible album. Granted, Wyruz never promised anything new; it's all right there in the recipe. In fact, they even cut their teeth covering their aforementioned idols before attempting to write their own material, so the inspiration is that much more apparent.

First, the vocals, as they define a lion's share of any album's overall atmosphere: Vegar Larsen is heavy on the Hetfield, although seemingly skipping straight to the Black Album era, causing the word "die" to inevitably contain three or more syllables. This is not to say the singing is poorly executed. It's not. Some rare high-energy rasps do serve to complement the deathier sections. Just pray you're not lactose intolerant, because Larsen serves up an artery-clogging dose of war-themed lyrical cheese.

The instrumentation on Fire At Will follows the same unfortunate trend?skillful performance paired with stale substance. Having already played together for ten years, every member's experience on their respective instrument is evident. The song-writing, however, is about as predictable as possible, save for a few select exceptions. The sheer frequency and duration of the guitar solos mean that instead of elaborating on an existing idea and moving on, they usually start off purposeful and soon overstay their welcome. Again, the execution is excellent, but the content is simply unmoving.

Some redeeming features of Fire At Will are the tangible conviction and intensity with which Wyruz play, and the paradoxical nostalgia one feels while ingesting this beefy heap of death-doused thrash; only on occasion do Wyruz appear to be more than a mosaic of imitation material, although a certain originality can somehow be found in the arrangement of Death-style tremolos, Testament (at the best of times) vocals, and even a hint of newer Immortal in guitar tones and riffing. A choice selection of riffs are actually fairly engaging, such as the Pantera-type intro groove in "Heartless", although these are usually followed up with many more mediocre melodies. The production is top-notch, with a nicely balanced mix, but that seems to be more of the rule than the exception these days.

The final product is a relatively decent debut. For all the banality of its components, Fire At Will manages to remain a fairly memorable album.