Artist: Masterstroke
Label: Dynamic Arts Records
Release: 2009
Rating: 3.5/5
Masterstroke are up-and-coming Finnish melodic heavy metallers from Tampere, and they’re now dropping their third studio album on the market, “As Days Grow Darker”. Scandinavia has been shamelessly flirting with melodic perfection in heavy metal for years on end, so Masterstroke are really just another logical step in rediscovering and reviving an old, already-invented musical legacy.
To get even a rough handle on the sound and musical identity Masterstroke cultivate, it’s worth taking a quick detour back to the mid-nineties, when an ultra-melodic German heavy metal outfit called Angel Dust was setting the European market on fire with their output (sadly overlooked). Stylistically, they were completely on their own back then, and it took almost another ten years before the first traces of similar sounds showed up in younger bands like Platitude or In Crave.
Masterstroke, then, put perfect melody first, using it to shape their basic motifs into a tight bunch of songs with clear heads and tails that crawl into your ear on the first listen. Like true Scandinavians, they have an exceptional knack for implanting a dramatic, gloomy atmosphere that hangs over the whole album.
The vocals are something of a blend of the singers from the bands mentioned in the second paragraph of this review, and with the occasional throaty rounding-off of a verse, they can even conjure up fleeting comparisons to Warell Dane of Nevermore. So the singer offers a wide expressive range, a fitting sense of immersion and a touch of pathos that anyone who struggles to settle into the mold of existence in the machinery of Western European “civilized” society can relate to. His bold delivery of the lines successfully defies and makes up for a lack of technical polish, which is his weaker point here.
Most of the songs are written in a mid-tempo, where the dark mood really comes into its own. The exception is the album’s fast-paced opener Wait For The Fall, which builds the bulk of its guitar phrase on (production-thickened) rapid picking on the open high E string. The production delivers an enviably massive wall of sound out of crunchy, sharply chopped riffing that hugs the central vocal tight, while a curtain of keyboards fuels the dramatic mood, draping the riffy edge like a gentle veil in the background. It might pay off in the future to build a bit more on the three-dimensionality of the sound and on sharper contrast between the rhythm line and the “front line” (vocals, guitar, keyboards), because “As Days Grow Darker” still leaves quite a bit of unused spectrum in the space of the sonic picture itself.
“As Days Grow Darker” is another step up for Masterstroke in terms of further consolidating their sound and style, a logical continuation of the previous two albums. The songs have grown a bit in their arrangements and are richer in expression, which points to the band’s successful, gradual maturing and healthy, natural development. Given how insanely catchy the lead motifs are on the “chorus–pre-chorus” axis, Materstroke have an enviable potential to win over wider audiences with it in the future.
Lineup
Niko Rauhala – vocals, guitar
Markus Kekoni – guitar
Jussi Kulomaa – keyboards
Marko Kolehmainen – bass guitar
Janne Juutinen – drums
Tracklist
01. Wait For The Fall
02. As Days Grow Darker
03. Walls Of My Temple
04. Unstoppable
05. Another Step Back
06. Purity Fades
07. Stillborn
08. Into Oblivion
09. Inside Myself
10. Old Wounds
11. Truth Revealed
