Basically he knows how he wants his character to play, he knows thematically what he wants, but there is no build in 4th edition that fits him like a glove. So I'm here giving you (the vast hive-mind that is the internet) the gist of his character concept and seeing if anybody can come up with an option that he wants to play.
The concept is a guy in giant spiked armor that pretty much throws himself at you like a spikey human wrecking ball, and then flails around, lashing out at anybody and everybody around him.
As far as I can tell this means:
good ability to charge
lots of melee range AoE
very hard to escape his melee range
heavy armor
I was thinking maybe avenger/warden? I dunno, its hard to get everything he wants without a severe compromise to playability IMO. if anybody is feeling up to a challenge, have at it
Sounds like a Whirling Barbarian. It'll take a bit to grab the heavier armor, but it sounds pretty close. If he wants one playable right at lv 1, I'd suggest a pole arm fighter.
I second Whirling Barbarian, but I'd just let him reflavor his Hide armor as being heavier and spiky, especially since he just needs to take Hide Armor Specialization to have a great AC.
He wants to be a Gutbuster?
Sounds like Thud Butt from Hook! I like the concept, I would go with a Barbarian with lots of charge and some reflavoring.
gutbuster brigade HOAH!
Another option is fighter, though. Both tempest and brawler work well for the above criteria and they share quite a bit of overlap. It's probably the closest fit because it hits all of the above spots -- wears heavy armor, can charge decently well (although barbarian's charge better), decent stickiness, and access to multiple melee burst attacks and melee multi-attack powers.
All of the above characters prefer Str/Dex as their main stats, so Half-Orcs fit perfectly (and have great feat support).
Brawler fighters wear scalemail and either dual wield spiked gauntlets (+2 / 1d6, military) or use a long (+3 / 1d8, military) / bastard (+3 / 1d10, superior) sword in their main hand with a spiked gauntlet in the offhand. They are the stickiest of the three options, but have the least access to area bursts -- any burst attacks they take are usually intended for tempest fighters, but because brawlers dual wield they work well for brawlers as well. Their armor class is decent (scale mail with a +1 class bonus to AC), they're fairly good chargers, they're pretty sticky in melee, but their damage output is a little low.
Tempest fighters tend to wear chainmail but sometomes wear hide if their dex is really good, and they dual wield two off-hand weapons or occasionally a double weapon. Common tempest fighter weapons include short swords (+3 / 1d6, military), drow long knives (+3 / 1d6, superior, heavy thrown), scourges (+2 / 1d8, military), throwing hammers (+2 / 1d6, military, heavy thrown), or a double sword (+3 / 1d6, superior, defensive). Tempest fighters actually have the lowest AC of these three builds, but they fit all of the points the best I think. They're considered the least sticky of all fighter builds, but they're still a fighter and that still counts for a ton on the battlemap, and they have access to multitudes of multi-attack and area burst powers that make them easily the highest damaging fighter in the game and even comparable to true strikers at spots. They're proficient at charging, perhaps a little more so than the brawler fighter.
Whirling barbarians wear hide and have one of the highest ACs in the game thanks to Barbarian Armored Agility combined with hide armor and a huge dex score. They tend to dual wield the biggest one-handed weapon they can get their hands on, such as bastard swords (+3 / 1d10, superior), waraxes (+2 / 1d12, superior), and craghammers (+2 / 1d10, superior, brutal 2). Of the three options the whirling barbarian easily has the most powerful bursts and the best charges as well as having the highest damage potential and armor class. However, they have no marking mechanic and therefore have very little stickiness to keep enemies in melee with them. This is not normally an issue -- the enemy typically cannot get away from you because charge makes melee characters so obscenely mobile (basically this isn't a bad MMORPG where melee can get kited to death) but it is worth noting. Also this character deviates directly from your stated goal of "heavy armor" -- his AC would undoubtedly be the highest of these three options, but his armor type would still be hide and still count as light armor.
All things said and done, while none of these characters fit *exactly* what you're looking for, all of them are pretty close, and all of them are pretty effective. There's plenty of details in the character optimization boards on how to optimize these three archetypes, although the brawler fighter being a brand new build in a brand new book is still very fresh and undeveloped whereas the tempest fighter and whirling barbarian has been picked to pieces and is understood inside out. Nonetheless, there's no need to make any big sacrifices to make this character; in a sense, it's already been made for you.
A bunch of hardass dwarves from some FR books.
Or this:
What about a Grappling Fighter ?