Description

2015 Doomentia Records press

1985 was certainly a great some sort of birth year for death metal. Possessed released Seven Churches, American act Insanity released their first rehearsal demo, Death were releasing their own milestone demos, etc. Along with these formative releases was Masters should-have-been debut album if they had signed to Combat records, but due to a number of circumstances they didn’t. And when they finally issued their self titled debut in 1990 on Nuclear blast, they were a slightly different beast, and in some ways more generic. Master’s 1985 unreleased album is a fine slab of mid-80s death metal. And although it isn’t quite a ripping as the Insanity demo, nor is it as demented as Seven Churches, it is still an excellent recording that I highly recommend to anyone in this sort of sound, or just old school death metal in general. But those who are looking for melody, technicality, and catchiness – stay far, far away, as this is definitely not for you. This is death metal in its earliest, most primitive form, and its a fine specimen of this sort of sound. The production on here is a mess, which is actually quite suiting (I wouldn’t want it any other way). Like the music, it is raw, ugly, crude, and cacophonous in a way that only could have been achieved by a proto-death metal band (weird sentence structure, I know. It will definitely bother some, as it is very noisy, but those with a liking of this sound will definitely appreciate it. My only complaint is that the guitars are a little too low in the mix, but it’s not really too much of a problem, as the riffs are still (for the most part) decipherable. Speckmann’s vocals here king of lye between his vocals from the Deathstrike material and the first Master album. In other words, they’re simply awesome. They are definitely lower then what Possessed and Insanity were using at the time but not quite as guttural as what would become the standard vocal styling used in death metal a few years later. The riffs kind of remind me of a less simplistic, more death metal oriented Hellhammer, which is always a good thing. The guitar tone is a hideous, grinding mess in the best way possible, as is the bass. The drums are pounded and pulverized throughout the whole album, and are actually pretty repetitive, but not the point where it becomes annoying. Had this album been mastered and released on its original year Master would have been listed among Possessed and Death as the ones responsible for forging Death Metal. Apart from the 85 recordings, this very cool album offers three previously unreleased demo tracks from 1991 and a rare track from an early Nuclear Blast compilation disc. This is highly recommended to death metal completists and fans of raw metal in general.

Track list:
1. Master
2. Unknown Soldier
3. Mangled Dehumanization
4. Funeral Bitch
5. Terrorizer
6. Pledge Of Allegiance
7. Re-Entry And Destruction
8. Constant Quarrel-demo 1991
9. Judgement Of Will-demo 1991
10. Submerged In Sin-demo 1991
11. Cut Through The Filth-from Death Is Just The Beginning Volume 2 compilation 1992