Review by Felix on March 27, 2020.

A good album is always both a blessing and a curse when it comes to the creation of its successor. Aggravating the situation, things don’t get easier in case of a massive line-up change. Mark and Peter Brabbs had left the band and neither Cliff Evans nor the new drummer gained song-writing credits. Thus, Algy and Mick had to manage a Herculean task. Six new own compositions were the result of the creative process – and they delivered more or less the afterburner to This Means War. The opener 'The War Drags Ever On' reaches a good quality level, but simultaneously it sounds like 'Just Like Something from Hell Part II'. Its vibrations are very similar to those of the first piece of Tank’s album from 1983. So, this is my main problem with Honour & Blood: it holds good songs, but all of them have already appeared in slightly different versions. The equal arrangement of the track list (three songs on the A, four songs on the B side, an opener which crosses the eight-minutes-mark and the title track on the third position) underlines the short distance between the two albums.

I said that Honour & Blood presents good material and due to the formidable education my mother gave me, I did not lie. Nevertheless, the musicians present themselves in a pretty melancholic mood ('W.M.L.A.'), they drag themselves through six minutes of solid yet somehow slightly uninspired old-men-melodies ('When All Hell Freezes Over') or they fall victim to the repetitiveness of their own compositions ('Kill'). Especially the overlong closer is not immune against lukewarm rhythms and does not add much value to the fourth work of the band. The other tracks are, despite their improvable configuration, still pretty strong, but it also must be said that the cover version on the fourth positions is among the best pieces of the album. Its chorus (“Cha-cha-chain, cha-cha-chain, chain of fools”) finds its place in the long-term memory of the listener immediately. Generally speaking, with the exception of 'The War Drags Ever On', there are not many songs that I would pick out for a best-of mix tape of Tank. Of course, 'Too Tired to Wait for Love' is more aggressive and better than its title indicates and generally speaking, the material does not suffer from unforgivable mistakes. Most riffs reflect the compositional class of Tucker and Ward. Nevertheless, I thought that Tank did not intend to write the same album twice, but it seems that I was wrong.

Despite its slightly irritating title, it is a matter of course that Honour & Blood has nothing in common with any form of skinhead-ideology (if we accept that these dudes have an ideology at all, maybe they just connect crude thoughts to a wrong result). The lyrics mainly deal with the usual war themes which are complemented by two, well, love songs (without any kind of kitschy elements). Okay, to sing against the “mad sons of Islam” would have been dangerous for every German band, because at least 50% of the media would have blamed them for being Nazis. Lucky England! However, all in all, the lyrics are not the crucial factor of the adequately produced album. Once again, it sounded slightly polished while avoiding sterility. And this was the final parallel between This Means War and Honour & Blood.

Rating: 7.2 out of 10