Wearing Scars – “A Thousand Words” [Album Review]

Featuring ex-members of Mutiny Within and Sacred Mother Tongue, the battle-scarred members that make up Wearing Scars return with their debut album and, given the lyrical content of some of the tracks along with the band name, it would seem that these boys are ready to take on the metal scene again.

Well, having drip-fed metal fans the odd tasty morsel from the album over the past few weeks, it’s nice to get confirmation that the final product is as epic as we’d all hoped it would be. A gigantic slice of melodic metal, A Thousand Words is full of galloping guitar runs, soaring vocals, shredding riffs and big Euro-metal choruses. Songs like “Stand Alone” and “Waiting For The End” are pristine, flawless slices of traditional metal where you will find yourself listening to a band who know how to write epic-sounding metal.

From Chris Clancy’s soaring, arena-size vocals to the hard-rocking, shredding guitar mayhem racing away behind those vocals, A Thousand Words is a melodic metal album of gargantuan proportions. Higher marks would have been scored had songs like “A Last Goodbye” not seen the album veer slightly too much into Bullet For My Valentine territory. However, the band rein it back in on tracks like “Better,” so all is not lost.

Unsurprisingly, given the pedigree of the line-up, big things are expected of Wearing Scars and, on A Thousand Words they’ve delivered a debut that has set the bar ridiculously high. Aside from a few moments where they slip off the rails, this is a debut album that will put their name on the map, setting them up for a very bright future in the metal scene.

Track Listing:

01. Become Numb
02. Stand Alone
03. Butterfly
04. Heart In Your Hands
05. Waiting For The End
06. I Could Never Say
07. Gone Forever
08. A Last Goodbye
09. Would You Lie
10. Better
11. Wearing Scars
12. Letters
13. Wounds

Run Time: 50:32
Release Date: July 24, 2015

Check out song “Stand Alone” here.