MASTER Vindictive Miscreant [CD]

You’re nothing but a Vindictive Miscreant! Cutthroat and aggressive Death Metal with some Thrash tendencies! In case you didn’t know, Master are one of the original US Death Metal bands. The band was founded in 1983 and is now reissuing their fourteenth albums. If you’re wondering why this band has such staying power just listen to their 1991 album “On the Seventh Day God Created... Master”, the music speaks for itself. Master’s sound always stayed rooted in the extreme Metal of the 1980’s, it has some Thrash or Hardcore Punk accents. Lyrically they are also not cut from the same cloth as your typical Death Metal band, the themes are political and societal, we often get a bitter or snarky commentary on American society and politics. The playing is mechanically precise; what gives the music character are Speckmann’s grimy vocals. There is some real passion and anger in them and you can tell that the music comes from a deep place. “Vindictive Miscreant” is a lesson in the old-school, showing the band’s mastery, (ahem), of song-based carnage and brutal, dirty heaviness. Studded through with a spiky thrash influence that’s always served them well, the songs on Master’s latest album stand up well against anything ostensibly similar you could match them against.