Masterlast fail to impress
You really have to wonder sometimes who some of these CDs are aimed for, I mean, use this case as an example; fairly radio-friendly generic industrial rock with female vocals, sounds great right? Wrong, Masterlast's debut offering shows that some bands, whilst having all the elements that you'd think would be needed to make them big, simply lack the flair of the instrumental drive to become anything more than a passing interest.
Musically speaking, Masterlast go for the industrial-rock genre wholeheartedly, but unfortunately, in their aim to apparently fit into the genre so well they haven't really done much that we've not heard before. There is nothing to really separate this album from many others, besides the inclusion of raspy female vocals, which still isn't that unique. Furthermore, some of the instrumentality seems a bit off, the drumming doesn't feel quite as tight or hard-hitting as you might like, the guitars don't do much that is really special beyond generic industrial chords and on the whole it just really fails to grab the attention like it should. Credit should be given where it is due though, and the production of the CD is pretty damn good for a debut by a little known band; no problems, no stark inconsistencies in sound, overall a very nice little polishing they gave to their CD, although this is akin to polishing a...
Overall, it's good to see people making music with a message that they've clearly put their hearts into. However, the fact that their message is clearly a personal one which has been said before in many more compelling ways by other, and yes, better, artists works against them. Furthermore, some rather generic and sloppy musical stylings let them down and you never get a proper feel for the rage that they are trying to convey. Overall, not the best debut for Masterlast but hopefully they can surmount this and reach their potential.