ALBUM REVIEW: Saints Dispelled – Master
A band like MASTER should need little in the way of introduction. Alongside the likes of DEATH and POSSESSED they helped pioneer the nascent death metal sound, with many of their earliest albums, notably their self-titled debut and 1991’s And On The Seventh Day, God Created…Master, being regarded as some of the genre’s earliest classics. Over the course of the last 41 years, and with 14 full-length albums to their name, the band’s death thrash stylings have been well established, with the band seen as death metal’s answer to MOTORHEAD partly due to their hard rock-inflected sound, and partly due to remaining true to their core sound and style throughout their career. Their latest, 15th album, Saints Dispelled, is yet another great slab of death thrash that further cements the band’s undeniable legacy as one of the most underrated acts within the genre’s long history.
Destruction In June, with its angular guitars, tight drums and acerbic vocals, is an incredibly energetic and catchy start to the record, embracing a slicker take on the ferocious death thrash that MASTER are famous for. With its punky rhythms and soaring leads, it’s as epic as it is fierce, setting a high bar for the rest of the album. Walk In The Footsteps Of Doom follows and is similarly powerful, with the rhythmic guitars allowing the rumbling bass and noxious vocals to carry the music, providing a harder, leaner sound that has a generous dose of confident hard rock swagger added to the aggression. Saints Dispelled shifts to a more rabid approach, with the animated guitars and throaty vocals sounding bestial and the faster pace and forceful performances taking the music to its most caustic extreme, without stripping away the solid, punchy qualities of the band’s sound.
Minds Under Pressure is driven by its juggernaut drums, which serve as an excellent backbone around which throbbing basslines and razor sharp guitar work are interwoven, with Paul‘s venom-soaked barks complementing the searing undercurrent, embracing a thrash-informed death ‘n’ roll not unlike the previous two songs. Find Your Life possesses a domineering gallop and lighter guitar sound that is built upon disjointed, melodic riffs that lend this an unhinged sound that borrows more from thrash than death metal, although the vocals, as always, are much closer to the latter in their coarseness, making this another lively, monolithic affair.
Marred And Diseased sees the punk edge return with a vengeance, with sludgy bass and great leads contributing to a meatier style, complemented by the focused drumming that underpins them. This is another song that makes room for an epic side in amongst the searing moments, adding another impressive dimension to this varied offering. The Wiseman incorporates haunting acoustic guitars, dancing guitar lines and a decidedly tighter, more savage sound than even some of the more biting efforts. It boasts some fantastic, imaginative basslines, with the end result being an exciting, unflinchingly vitriolic piece of classic death metal. The Wizard Of Evil, by comparison, is a solid slab of death thrash with frenzied drums and grating guitars, with the smoky vocal snarl only accentuating how dense the music is. It’s a great conclusion to the album proper, with lots of discordant riffs and wailing flourishes and false endings tempering the powerful nature of much of this number.
The two bonus tracks are every bit as impressive as what came before them, with the first, Nomads, being a gargantuan, gnarly death metal monolith. The drums, guitar and bass craft an impenetrable wall of sound with massive rhythms and a chaotic touch – a great example of the band’s primal death thrash roots – with spirited hard rock leads providing a catchiness that is hard not to get drawn in by. Alienation Of Insanity goes in the opposite direction, with cleaner, reverb-drenched tones and a slower tempo giving this a slow burning, grandiose quality that departs from the full throttle intensity of the preceding nine songs. It’s still incredibly ferocious, with thicker vocals and vicious musicianship, but it has another layer to it that distinguishes it from the rest.
If there’s any band within death metal that could conceivably phone it in and get away with it, it’s arguably one of the bands that pioneered the genre. If MASTER really wanted to, they could easily have begun to put out dependable but uninspired albums, and they’d still have enough good will built up over the previous four decades and 14 albums to still be regarded as legends. Luckily, MASTER are still putting out world class music even this deep into their career, bringing tonnes of aggression and energy when even some of the bands that they influenced have become stale. If anything, over the course of the last few albums, MASTER‘s sound has only gotten stronger and fiercer, and if this album is anything to go by, it doesn’t look like they’re going to be running out of great ideas any time soon.
Rating: 9/10
Saints Dispelled is out now via Hammerheart Records.
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