Artist: Sinner
Label: AFM Records
Release: 2011
Running time: 42:30
Rating: 4/5
Mat Sinner (or “Mathias Lasch” to his friends) started Sinner back in 1982, a standard-bearer of the early German power/speed metal scene, and one of the oldest German bands still going, though of course it can’t compete with the longevity of Scorpions or Accept.
Sinner haven’t been Mat’s priority for quite a while now, since things are going much better for him with Primal Fear. He’s also constantly busy with other projects anyway. One of those was the third Alen/Lande album “Showdown”, then the self-titled album from the male-female vocal pairing of Kiske/Summerville, then the new Voodoo Circle album “Broken Heart Sindrome”, and on top of that plenty of help for his Primal Fear colleague Ralf Scheppers on the singer’s first solo album. It’s worth noting that by the time the new Sinner album “One Biullet Left” comes out, recording of the new Primal Fear album is in full swing, due out in early 2012.
No rest for the wicked, then! As for “One Bullet Left”, this isn’t a brand-new story. Well, not in every respect. Let’s run through the parts we already know from the band’s past. The album stays strictly true to the typical Sinner groove, rooted in the old-school, hardened building blocks of melodic metal/heavy rock. Yes, you could call them co-initiators of what later became power metal, a camp that today, to some extent, includes Sinner as well. “One Bullet Left” is therefore a must for fans of Sinner, since once again it’ll fit them like a glove, and then some.
That said, “One Bullet Left” brings some very clear departures. Mat Sinner has radically shaken up the lineup. He’s swapped out almost the entire crew of musicians around him for the new studio album, with the exception of guitarist Cristoph Leim. There are five members in the band. No big deal, you’ll say, that’s nothing new. Nope. The keyboardist is gone. The album does have keyboards in shades, but Mat Sinner handles those himself, as does Alex Beyrodt, a returning Sinner member who’s primarily a guitarist. Mat has also brought in no fewer than three guitarists. Besides Leim, there’s Alex Schlopp (Tarja Turunen, Farmer Boys) and the aforementioned Alex Beyrodt, the “German Malmsteen”, who knows how to rein in that quality when needed, so Mat can work with him just fine. Alex is one of the best German guitarists in metal. He played with Sinner in the nineties, including on the best album of Sinner’s career, “Nature Of Evil”. He’s also known for his work in Silent Force, and he likes to show off his “Malmsteen-esque” side more intensely in his new project Voodoo Circle. On top of that, Beyrodt has actually been helping out Primal Fear on their latest tour all along, filling in for Magnus Karlsson. That said, the real gain of the new Sinner lineup lies elsewhere. Behind the drums. The new drummer is Andre Hilgers (Rage, Silent Force, ex-Axxis). All these musicians have known each other for years, like the back of their own hand. No hide-and-seek games here, then.
This overhaul is what carries the band’s new sound. Drumming this lively, this dynamic and this varied hasn’t been heard in Sinner since the days of Fritz Randow and Uli Kusch, and it sounds just like that on “One Bullet Left”. The gap Sinner could never quite fill after Tom Naumann left the band has been nicely patched up by Beyrodt, who’s breathed a hefty dose of melody and punchiness into the new Sinner’s solos and guitar passages. “One Bullet Left” is once again richly woven and shot through from head to toe with twin-guitar harmonies in thirds. Thanks to Mat Sinner’s skilled production, the full sonic spectrum delivers the punch and liveliness you’d want, with strongly pronounced contrasts between the individual building blocks. The sound isn’t as bristling with metal bite as on “Nature Of Evil”, but it’s definitely Sinner’s heaviest album since “There Will Be Execution”. The same goes for the inspiration of the new crew.
Of course, Sinner wouldn’t be Sinner if they didn’t, at least once per album, nod to the Thin Lizzy legacy for inspiration. This time the victim is Back On Trail, which also came out in August 2011 as the new album’s lead single. But precisely because of its “Boys Are Back In Town”-style phrases, it doesn’t do the best job as pre-promotion for the album.
Even though Mat has musicians around him who breathe heavy metal, they’re doomed to dance by the rules Mat Sinner sets. You can tell he’s been hanging out with the melodic rock crowd lately. Add to that the fact that Mat grew up on heroes of heavy rock culture like U.F.O., the aforementioned Thin Lizzy and so on. So One Bullet Left comes across as the most melodic album of Sinner’s career. That won’t sit entirely well with die-hard fans of the power metal side of the band from the “Nature Of Evil” era.
After the aforementioned Back On Trail, the title track is a surprise, borrowing the marching rhythmic backbone of Gotthard’s Lift U’ Up, with the melodies of “Sinner perception” laid over it, and a cookie-cutter chorus that begs for hands in the air at gigs. Another such flash, with a markedly obvious flirtation with melodic rock, is the closing Rolling Away, which doesn’t hide it, especially in the way the multi-part vocal lines in the chorus are put together.
On the other hand, the album really burns with an outstanding feel for half-punchy (and truly effective) dramatic ballad-leaning material, something Sinner has always done well. That’s Haunted, with the drama theater of the classic Judgement Day and a grabby chorus, where the contribution of Primal Fear screamer Ralf Scheppers can’t be missed in the vocal harmonies. Wake Me When I’m Sober is the next such moment, and its energy comes diligently close to that of Haunted.
For the hardcore metalheads, there aren’t many tangible neck-snapping moments this time either. The album doesn’t hide its metallized catchiness, though, with the opener The One You Left Behind, Give & Take, and Suicide Mission, and neither does the “experiment” Mind Over Matter, which takes its main riff from the Accept/U.D.O. legacy, which is nothing new if you remember the song Deathwalker from the Sinner album “Judgement Day”. Mat gets caught in a loop in the chorus when he climbs into the high register with his voice, and that’s where his weak vocal side comes to the surface. Even the harmonizing of the multi-part vocal layers leans toward what Accept or U.D.O. do far better, but it can’t hide the vulnerability of Sinner’s voice in the higher registers.
10 2 Death, Atomic Playboys, Mend To Be Broken (the latter again fleetingly recalls the flirtation with Thin Lizzy) are the heavy rock representatives, but dressed up in the modern, cranked-up production normally the domain of German power metal. The expected Mat Sinner groove.
“One Bullet Left” achieves a thematically clear emphasis on variety, liveliness and the demanding dynamic flow of events it calls for. It sounds pleasantly refreshed, but still “Sinner-esque”. The main driver of recognizability and the trademark of the Sinner story is of course Mat’s distinctive nasal, at times caustically throaty, mid-pitched, manly macho vocal approach. Of the last three albums, “One Bullet Left” is what Mat has quietly wanted all along: a lively, inspired record, with pulsing full production and a better yield of melodic catchiness. To achieve that, he’s once again equipped all the songs more generously with twin-guitar harmonies in thirds that sit over the riffs, and beefed up the choruses with harmonized multi-part singing. More than ever.
So we’ve got an interesting album that will please true believers in the Sinner discography, will draw the attention of some more melodic rock and hard rock fans to the band, and at the same time will put off everyone who’s only fired up by the Sinner era of heavier power metal flirtation, which Mat Sinner has obviously left behind for good ten years ago with “End Of Sanctuary” (2001). However you slice it, in the final tally this is a much better record than “Mask Of Sanity” and “Crash And Burn”, thanks to the new lineup’s far greater inspiration, as well as the overall upgrade, especially in the recording and production stage, of everything Mat Sinner failed to fully deliver on the previous two releases. A different, lovely and fresh Sinner album in every way, which will nonetheless keep splitting fans of firmly declared rock/metal eroticism into two camps. As mentioned. The lineup Sinner have on the new album could easily play first-rate, pure-blooded heavy metal of Teutonic German pedigree, and that’s the ace-filled poker hand hidden up Sinner’s sleeve, whose payoff depends on Mat Sinner’s will and inspiration! Maybe someday. Or maybe never (again).
Lineup
Mat Sinner – vocals, bass guitar
Alex Beyrodt – guitar
Christof Leim – guitar
Alex Scholpp – guitar
Andr̩ Hilgers Рdrums
Production
Mat Sinner
Track list
1. The One You Left Behind (03:39)
2. Back on Trail (03:56)
3. Give & Take (04:54)
4. One Bullet Left (04:40)
5. 10 2 Death (03:14)
6. Haunted 05:20)
7. Atomic Playboys 04:36)
8. Suicide Mission 03:30)
9. Wake Me When I’m Sober (03:56)
10. Mind Over Matter (04:00)
11. Mend to be Broken (03:53)
12. Rolling Away (04:55)
