Review Summary: Finally, this album is not at all BAD. But it is not good either. There are 2-3 good songs, but a big part of the tracks are really boring and not convincing. Recommended only to those that living only with water, bread and Thrash Metal.
Viking is a Thrash Metal band that already for those years (80's) was exactly the same as a thousand others bands. But, fortunately for them, for a lot of Thrash Maniacs they are a great band, which instead they are not.
Started with a poor debut album, "Do Or Die", a dull album and devoid of interesting ideas with a sound already heard from various albums by Dark Angel and Slayer,
Viking arrive in 1989 with their second and final effort, "Man Of Straw". Certainly there are Thrash Maniacs who think it is a masterpiece, but in reality it is not. Quite the contrary. But anyway,
you may notice that Viking have made a great leap forward in terms of quality and technical, with some very interesting ideas. It would seem an album from another planet compared to "Do Or Die".
For example there are some good songs like "White Death", which is a very gripping and overwhelming great song of (Technical) thrash metal, with catchy and fast riffs.
But all in all is still not very convincing, indeed. The platitudes are still there, and unfortunately there are too many. "Twilight Fairies", "The Trial" and yet the final title track "Man of Straw"
are some of the examples of the banality that are in this album. The riffs of them are really boring and the voice of the singer is very monotonous. Those songs are too flat and they do not invite the listener to keep listening to all the work.
There are varied and interesting songs like "Case of the Stubborns", but unfortunately those tracks are accompanied by embarrassing, shitty and boring songs, such as "Winter".
And then the result of the album is not very positive. I don't recommend to listen to this album because it is nothing of impressionant, but if you're Thrash Maniacs and you have liked their debut album "Do Or Die", you can give it a listen.
There were always been many bands that are much better than them, but there was even worse (the Great Kat tell you anything?).
