Album Reviews

Someone drops dead in front of you and you realize you never got round to taking that CPR course? Don’t panic. Just slip your headphones onto their head and blast Cheap Heat by A Wilhelm Scream at full volume. If that doesn’t work, don’t beat yourself up. Nothing else was going to save them either.

20+ Years and 7 albums in, I’m still not quite sure how to label these guys. Most of the time they are described as a melodic hardcore band, but I feel like that doesn’t quite capture the band’s technicality and sheer unleashed-ness. I mean, there’s shredding, and then there’s A Wilhelm Scream-level shredding. Throw in great hooks and you have a winning combination Think Strung Out after being dunked in a barrel of Red Bull.

A Wilhelm Scream storm out the gate with the no holds barred ‘Somebody’s Gonna Die’ and only let you come up for air after they wrap up closing track ‘Poison II’ half an hour later. That relentlessness is both their greatest strength, but I can imagine it can also be their biggest hurdle. They race through these ten songs while throwing everything but the kitchen sink at you, and it can be a bit much. I seriously like what they are doing, but at the same time find it hard to sit through the entire album at once.

That overwhelming intensity does mean the individual tracks can blur together a little, especially on first listen. But when Cheap Heat clicks, it really clicks. Beneath the chaos is a band operating with frightening precision, balancing breakneck riffs and throat-shredding urgency with melodies that somehow still worm their way into your brain. It may not be the kind of album you casually throw on in the background, but as a concentrated hit of technical melodic hardcore, few bands do it with this much energy, skill, or conviction. Two decades in, A Wilhelm Scream still sound like they’re trying to outpace gravity itself and more often than not, they succeed.

Cheap Heat track listing:

1. Somebody's Gonna Die
2. The Scumbag Grift
3. Midnight Ghost
4. I Got Tunnel Vision
5. Let It Ride
6. Fell Off
7. Run.
8. Visitor: Unimpressed
9. Unsolving the Mystery
10. Poison II