It felt like this album was a long time in the making. Warrel Dane happens to be one of my favourite vocalists ever and his day job, Nevermore is one of my favourite bands ever. So it was with a lot of anticipation that I waited for this album and even the news that Dane was collaborating with Soilwork guitarist Peter Wichers wasn’t enough to dent my enthusiasm for the solo album.

So anyway, the album starts with 'When We Pray' which has an opening riff that can only be described as Nevermore-lite but it does have some nice vocals from Dane. The whole song has a feel that’s a bit reminiscent of Nevermore’s debut. There’s a throw-away solo and a soft section in the middle of the song but it’s all a bit by the numbers. After this though, the album goes completely downhill. 'Messenger' sounds like a Soilwork left over with its 'Figure Number Five' riff and Dane sounds very flat.

I don’t have the patience to go through this crap song by song but at the end of the day, it’s the opener 'When We Pray' that turns out to be the strongest song on the album and that’s saying a lot because it’s not even worthy of being a Nevermore b-side. Jeff Loomis turns up to play a solo on 'Messenger' and James Murphy steps up on 'The Day the Rats Went to War' but they really can’t do too much to save this album or even the songs they appear on.

There’s a real lack of testicular fortitude here. The guitars sound weak, the rhythm section is by the numbers, the vocals are flat and Dane seems content to rehash past lyrical ideas and maybe even past vocal lines. There’s a real sense of wastage of time (mine) combined with some really bad cheesy sounding songs that even Soilwork would have rejected leaving 'Praises to the War Machine' with no real redeeming qualities whatsoever.

Again, another one for the Warrel Dane fanatics but overall I’d rather listen to Serpent’s Knight than this boring pile of crap.



Label - Century Media
Year of Release - 2008