MASTERWORK
Bad
Power
Line-up:
Jesse Vaino (dr), Jetro Vaino
(git), Dan Österberg (bs/voc)
format: 7"
year: 1990
country:
Finland
label:
Black Water
#:
WATER 002
info:
Insert w/ lyrics.
style: Heavy Metal, Doom Metal
Side A:
- Bad Power
Side B:
- Penitential Sermon
((CLICK PICS FOR HI-RES SCANS))
"This
astonishing, brilliant band is younger than you maybe even would guess!
Jesse 13, Jeppe 15 and Dani 16"
The quote from the insert might raise your interest in this 7" or
it might do the opposite, but in my case it was a certain buy. Good or
bad, these youthful kind of releases always has a certain quaint charm
and originality to them. As it happened, MASTERWORK turned out to be a
great act in their own right. With a 13-year-old drummer in the band you're
not about to risk your musical rep by churning out ultra-fast, intricate
techno-thrash really sloppy and MASTERWORK were smart enough to play within
their capabilities. The level of musicianship is on the other hand much
higher than expected, and "Bad Power" is a surprisingly accomplished
piece of mid-paced Power Metal, possibly taking a few influences from
early METALLICA with added melodic vocals and the harshest Thrash-edge
gracefully subtracted. Kinda brings me back to the days of headbanging
in front of some high-school hopefuls at the local youth café as
a teenager. Where all those band this good? I don't remember. (And this
was back in the days when I still went to concerts sober!)
The flipside is where things get really interesting. The slower "Penitential
Sermon" is - believe it or not - dead-on PAGAN ALTAR!(!?) 'Now how
is that possible?' you ask? The British Gods were practically unknown
at the time. It's my guess that the kids in MASTERWORK had a more Metallica-ish
"For Whom The Bell Tolls"-sound in mind, but couldn't quite
muster up the anger to produce a heavy Thrash-stomper of this caliber.
The end result was instead this mournful, doomy piece of Metal excellence
and Dan's juvenile, barley broken voice does this song so much more justice
than the faster A-side.
It struck me that this is probably the only record I've reviewed where
the band members are younger than myself. It's not a too far-off guess
then that they might still be involved in the Metal scene, and I hope
they somehow come across this review and drop me a line (them being of
the 'on-line generation' and all), coz their ugly little EP-thingy has
got me cravin' for more.