Epic in scale. Mild in impact.
185 days till W:O:A 2023. The clock’s ticking, and I’ve made it my mission to listen to every band on the line-up. A bold move. Possibly a stupid one. But we’re here now.
I’m already taking far too much time with individual bands—desperately trying to find something to latch onto, even when there’s—not much there. Last week’s Masterplan was rough. This week? It’s Warkings. And unfortunately, the struggle continues.
The Concept: Warkings Assemble
Warkings is a power metal supergroup made up of musicians who already have several other musical projects and full calendars. For this one, they decided to throw on alter egos like it’s some historical LARP hosted by Manowar. Each band member embodies a “warking” from history, summoned from Valhalla by Odin himself to bring metal to the masses. Sure. Why not.
- The Tribune (Georg Neuhauser, vocals)
- The Crusader (Markus Pohl, guitar)
- The Spartan (Steffen Theurer, drums)
- The Viking (Chris Rodens, bass)
Georg is Austrian, the rest are German. That’s the least confusing thing about all this.
They’ve released four studio albums between 2018 and 2022. For this review, I picked their debut Reborn from 2018—mostly because it was the only one I could get through in a single sitting.
Battle Cries and Déjà-Vu
Reborn runs for just over 40 minutes and includes ten tracks—each of which arrives confidently wearing a leather tunic and shouting about honour. It opens strong-ish with Give ‘Em War: an “oriental” intro, chuggy riffs, and blasting drums set the tone well enough. The vocals, though, are where it starts to lose me. Georg Neuhauser has a very clean voice. Technically excellent. Too clean for me. As soon as he comes in, the heaviness kind of evaporates. Still, the guitar solo? Flawless. It’s a theme that repeats.
In fact, the guitar solos are the consistent highlight throughout the entire album. Markus Pohl absolutely delivers, track after track. If this album had been nothing but his solos stitched together into an instrumental EP, I might be raving.
Elsewhere, it gets repetitive fast. Songs tend to blur together—oriental intros, mid-paced chugging, and choruses that range from “catchy” to “oh god, make it stop.” Never Surrender is fine. Hephaistos, the fan favourite, is borderline unbearable to me. I cannot explain it—I just hate that chorus with a deep, irrational fury. Gladiator manages to pull things back a bit, with its dramatic bridge and predictable, but effective, energy.
There are moments where things break formula—Fire Falling Down and Sparta both try something different. The latter even features guest vocals from Melissa Bonny (aka The Queen of the Damned), whose guttural growls inject some much-needed grit. It doesn’t save the song entirely, but it helps. Then there’s Battle Cry, which sets up something epic and promptly delivers cheese. Gang shouts and platitudes galore.
By the time The Last Battle staggers in with more gang-shouts and recycled riffing, I’ve emotionally checked out. And then comes Die Flut—a slow ballad in German that sounds like Unheilig and Santiano had a midlife crisis together. It’s so tonally whiplash-inducing, I actually checked if my Spotify had skipped to a different artist. It doesn’t fit the rest of the album, it doesn’t even try to make sense in context, and worst of all—it’s not even interesting in its weirdness. It just sits there, droning solemnly, as if we're meant to have a deep emotional reaction to this damp leftover tacked on the end.
Verdict from Valhalla
Warkings do what they set out to do: perform textbook power metal with high production value, a cosplay-tier concept, and technically skilled musicianship. But that’s exactly the problem—it’s all textbook. No edge, no grit, nothing that lingers once the album’s over except maybe a faint craving for something with actual teeth.
It’s the kind of music that sounds like it was written by committee over a themed buffet. Perfectly inoffensive. Relentlessly average. And somehow still exhausting.
Next.