Master - Faith is In Season
Review: Everything about Master is raw and muscular, but not unintelligent: this music reassembles the shattered world underlying an illusory political reality, putting together more than information a worldview derived from the core elements of death metal: hardcore punk and the heavy metal bands that didn't sell out.
Thick sludgy bass-roped riffs support competent punk-rock and Slayer-style drumming, with riff collisions driving song structure changes which follow the "story" narrated by the changing melody of the vocal veteran Paul Speckmann hoarses into the mike. In heritage, these riffs are pure punk and metal, but in this album Master fuse them into a form of crossover music which brings heavy blues road music into the dark and senseless world of nihilistic hardcore/metal.
Galloping beats support propulsive-strummed riffs in the style of Motorhead or Black Sabbath, meeting the uptempo cruising of grindcore music in staggered rhythms and counterpoint slam riffing. All instruments are playfully creative, sneaking at times a reggae beat into the percussion or sliding blues or psychedelia into the strength of lead guitar or riff phrasing. The riffs are raw, fervent in rhythm and nihilistic in mode and melody, which fluctuate between a classic metal dirge and a punk music chaos space in which rhythm differentiates randomness.
1. Follow Jesus
2. Cast the First Stone
3. Addicted to the Pistol
4. Imprisoned
5. Re-terrorizer 
6. We're About to Fall
7. Believers Have a Choice
8. Faith is Still in Season
9. Broken Promise
10. Where Are you Now?
11. Butchered by Numbers
12. Antidote
13. Spiritual Bankruptcy
14. Victims of Jesus
15. Return to Vietnam
16. Previously Committed
This music is violent and driving, but taken as songs it is highly abstract, despite seemingly abrupt collections of riffs, using looping techniques to build expectancy that delivers a listener between several points of each song while making each shift context until a coherent conclusion is seen. With a refinement that comes from repeated playing and contemplation, these songs are sturdy in their inclusion only of the necessary, but with a re-inventor's eye there are rough spots in which chaos was deliberately inserted. The attention to melodic guitar over hypnotic thunder riffing adds a morbid and doomy touch to this highly refined metal.
Highly recommended crossover death metal from these American standouts, who have been at work developing death metal since the first Slayer record, in whatever context of heavy music the listener can have, as this is so clear in the fusion of its elements that it expresses the raw emotion of antisocial resistance.