THE MASQUERADE
Holy shit! This is some metal right here! Right down to the freaky
looking album cover. It’s a picture of a guy dressed like The Pope, but
his staff morphs into a snake at the top of it, and he’s holding a mask
of himself and underneath is this scary looking dude (which sort of
resembles Corey Taylor’s current SLIPKNOT mask). I like the way that
CHAIN COLLECTOR used a few different vocal styles because at least they
aren’t trying to hide everything they say with jungle growls. The music
itself is brutal, it’s not the fastest metal I’ve heard but it is
certainly quality metal, besides, a lot of bands overdo it trying to be
the fastest. The songs flow very well and the arrangements seem to be
well thought out. They’re not reinventing the wheel or anything but it
seems that they know a little more about writing this type of Metal
than most of the high school garage bands out there. With a song title
like “Crucifixion” you’d be expecting some loud, noisy, Deicide-ish
type of thrash song, but it actually starts off pretty tame, it gets
heavier about a minute and a half in. I really like the chugging
rhythms of the guitars on this song, and it’s probably my favorite song
on
The Masquerade.
“Tapping The Vein” has a very cool guitar solo in the intro, but the
vocals that jump in right after it, I have to admit, sound a little
goofy, almost like a bad impression of Lemmy or something. “Wicked
Mask” is also a great song, as is “Winter Princess” which closes the
album. I like these guys, they put a lot of different elements of
different kinds of Metal into their music, which I like, it’s not
totally Death Metal, it’s not totally Trash, and it sure as hell isn’t
Hot Topic music!
