WARGASM - Why Play Around?

Artist:  Wargasm
Album:  Why Play Around?
Year:  1988
Genre:  Thrash Metal

Wargasm was a band I discovered by way of a fanzine which reviewed their 1986 demo, Satan Stole My Lunch Money.  I promptly shoved my well-hidden cash into an envelope and waited for the thrashers from Boston to send me their humorously titled tape.  A week later I was filled with excitement that a package with a Massachusetts return address was in my mailbox.  Now understand, the demo purchasing/trade syndicate wasn’t always the most reliable process on the planet so when something you ordered actually showed up it was like a little slice of Christmas!  The 4 songs on the cassette were bludgeoning, so when I got wind an LP was going to be released, I waited…impatiently.  1988 was an incredible year for second generation thrash bands. Mind-numbing records by Violence, Nuclear Assault, Holy Terror, Voivod, Testament, Znowhite and so many others pummeled people in a way the “Big Four” didn’t that year.  Wargasm’s full-length debut, Why Play Around?, is a clinic of how to do thrash metal right.  The brothers Spillberg were a crushing combination on guitar and drums.  Both are more than technically proficient and sound as if they’ve been playing together since birth; which they probably have.  I’m sure the bass player is just as talented, but it takes a better ear than I have to distinguish what he’s slinging.  That being said, the guitars, drums and raspy, barked out vocals are cranked to the forefront which gives this album a lively, crunchy and very heavy sound.  Wargasm played a choppy, start-stop-go fashion and possessed an incredible ability to shift back and forth between tempos instantly.  The songwriting is diverse.  Each song on this record stakes its claim so as not to be confused with another.  Whether it’s the stomping feel of the opener "Wasteland," the mid-tempo, double bass assault of “Bullets And Blades,” the straight, brutal thrash of "Undead," or the bounteous riffs of "Humanoid," Wargasm deliver a variety of styles that will keep heads banging for years to come.

Listen to "Humanoid" here.