Mastery

Instrumental metal is usually a good prospect if you ask me. Take Toronto’s Mastery, who no doubt would have had some cheeseball/Phil Anselmo-ish clown ruining these songs. It’s actually pretty interesting how when the vocals are stripped away, it becomes slightly harder to pigeonhole the tunes: is this thrash, wanky guitar metal, or slightly nu-groove metal? Well, it’s not really the latter, and mainly the former, with a whole lot of wanking in there as well. Really, too many guitar solos spoil the show here, and the drum sound is too click-y to be useful. But it’s still hard to not bang the old melon while listening to this one, and again, the elimination of a vocalist is a daring move that means commercial suicide but, hey, saved this album from total death.