PSYCHOWARD
“Committed”
Album Review by Iron Mathew

9.5/10

PsychoWard are a heavy metal band based in the UK fronted by legendary singer John “Wardi” Ward – ‘Committed’ is the bands new album, emerging in 2024…

…featuring Spanish guitar legend Miguel Angel Lopez Escamez, bassist Gonso, and drummer Tony Montana. Wardi has enjoyed over four decades within the metal music community, spending the eighties living in L.A. working with the likes of Slash, Madam X and Hurricane, taking over lead vocal duties in Shy during the nineties, later returning to Britain when the Grunge movement began to gain momentum in America. Working with Oliver/Dawson Saxon throughout the noughties, Wardi appeared on three of the bands albums – ‘Re://Landed’ (2000), ‘Rock Has Landed, It’s Alive’ (2009) and ‘Motorbiker’ (2012) – after which he relocated to Spain where he met guitarist Escamez. And that’s when PsychoWard was born!

The bands new album ‘Committed’, features ten heavy metal anthems that blend an eighties hair and sleaze metal feel with a bombastic hard rock nature – ‘Crazy Angel’ setting the touch paper alight with an incredible “foot on the monitor” gallop! A gallop that stems from the eighties NWOBHM evolution, spearheaded by the likes of Angel Witch, Iron Maiden and Saxon. ‘Crazy Angel’ is full on, in your face heavy metal of the old school variety guaranteed to plant smiles a mile wide on the face of every listener everywhere! What an instantly head turning start…

…’Forever More’ taking a more bombastic hard rock approach – PsychoWard moving swiftly from metal to rock! ‘Forever More’ has the emphatic-ness of eighties arena rock melded with silky smooth melodic heavy metal to ooze an air of musical boundary breaking bravado – rock and metal fans coming together as one to celebrate a cracking song. And talking of celebrating, ‘Celebrate’ picks up the pace and power, pushing on with an incredible amount of energy, PsychoWard nodding their heads back to a glorious time during the eighties when the likes of Motley Crue and Skid Row hammered everyone with metal edged hard rock! Just the ticket if you ask me, the band stomping hard with ‘Chinese Whispers’ – hitting listeners, fans and followers with the proverbial tonne of bricks! The hardest hitting of all the songs heard so far, ‘Chinese Whispers’ emanates a nineties rock sound – you know the sound, it’s the sound (the aforementioned) Motley Crue and Skid Row took during the Grunge invasion! An invasion that tried – and failed – to kill off rock (and to a certain extent metal) – Grunge becoming (as far as I’m concerned) a thing of the past, while rock and metal is still here, stronger than ever, attracting new fans every single day. So ignore what an ageing, make-up wearing American glam rocker from the seventies has to say, come listen to PsychoWard and understand why rock and metal will never die!

‘Part Of The Machine’ is high octane heavy metal with tonnes of get up and go, the band galloping forth with incredible purpose and intent – ‘Committed’ just getting better and better as each song strides on by! If you’re looking for an album to remind you of the good old days, this is it! If you’re looking for an album to introduce a friend to rock and metal, this is it! And if you’re looking for an album to blow your socks off with electrifying energy and sizzling pizzazz, this is definitely it! ‘Committed’ has everything you could ever want, the band committed to delivering a rollicking good time to make you sleep well – but only after the album’s finished though! ‘Cause we’re only half way through right now, ‘Sleepwell’ marching on with a level of elegance not heard previously, the majesty of ‘Committed’ rising to new, and uncharted heights. Every song on offer clocks in at around four minutes in length, paving the way for an attention holding, quick moving roller coaster of phenomenal twists and turns! Twists and turns that take everyone through, around, and into every corner of both the heavy metal and hard rock genres – ‘Champions’ hitting harder than a heavyweight boxing champion! The energy and oomph driving ‘Champions’ is off the fucking charts, PsychoWard surging on with more power than was needed to power the Large Hadron Collider in Cerne, Switzerland, during 2012’s “splitting the atom” experiment!

And keeping the power levels extremely high, ‘What Am I Doing Wrong’ plants its feet firmly on the monitor of old school heavy metal, the band inviting every metalhead to bang their head faster than ever before! Yet amazingly, PsychoWard still retain elements of hard rock within every song on ‘Committed’, the band attracting a very wide array of listeners to the bands soundscape – a soundscape that can only be described as an eclectic rock and metal mix! And pulling hard on the heart strings like no other song on offer does, ‘Thrown It All Away’ brings balladry to the fore, bursting at the seams with emotion and passion! The serenity and mellowness is overwhelming, ‘Thrown It All Away’ exploding into life after the half way mark to deliver a bombastic barrage of heavy hitting hard rock. And bringing the album to a close, the band step into Southern rock territory with ‘One More For The Road’ emanating a mighty Aerosmith feel – a feel so mighty that I just had to check Aerosmith’s back catalogue to make sure PsychoWard hadn’t covered an Aerosmith song! And they haven’t, ‘One More For The Road’ is a PsychoWard original featuring an immense swagger, the band striding tall and very proud. What a finish!

Overall, a majestic march of heavy metal and hard rock, ‘Committed’ offers variety in abundance, every song delivered with punch and panache.

TRACKLIST

Crazy Angel
Forever More
Celebrate
Chinese Whispers
Part Of The Machine
Sleepwell
Champions
What Am I Doing Wrong
Thrown It All Away
One More For The Road

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