Maniac Party

What happened, Мастер? Too many days in Belgium, inhaling the heady atmosphere? Or too many nights in the nearby Netherlands, inhaling the heady… well, atmosphere? Or were you affected by the rudderless and floundering thrash movement in Europe and America as they moved in directions which all too many of us thrashers didn’t like, as all too many great bands were in the 1990’s? At any rate, it can’t truly be said that you lost your big Russian souls on this album (yet), in spite of the evolution of your sound and in spite of Maniac Party here not really topping the output on С Петлёй на Шее. That can’t really be said of the album art, though (which truly is, um… colourful). My sincere commendations to your artist.

That said, let’s talk about the music. One particularly troubling feature of the album is that the instrumental / sound-effects intros to each track have progressed from being interesting interludes and acceptable deviations on С Петлёй на Шее, into being an outright annoyance. The weird, soft ambient thirty-second prelude to ‘Beastie Generation’, the children playing and singing on the title track, the church bells on ‘Lock Them in Graves’, the motorcycle revving on ‘Punk Guys’… none of them really serves any useful purpose, none of them really enhances or has any discernible connexion with the sound or the lyrical matter of the tracks they are attached to. It’s a gimmick, and not an amusing one. That said, once you get around to the actual songs, you get a few hints at the same kind of quality to be heard on С Петлёй на Шее. Maniac Party carries forward more than its fair share of the aggression and anger that made С Петлёй на Шее so great, but the speed and the precision cleanliness have both been gimped a bit. One could justly say that this is less of a sniper shot of an album and more of a shotgun blast – still effective, but far less focussed, more dependent on the brute concussive force than on the exacting nature of the riffing and drumwork. Mikhail Seryshev is also going here more for mid-tenor, barking anger than for his higher-pitched screaming on the previous album (though we still get one good ‘beastie!’ at the end of ‘Beastie Generation’).

Don’t get me wrong, though, there’s still plenty to love about this album. The pounding momentum of ‘Beastie Generation’ has a tendency to stick in your head, even though the changing time signatures and all-over-the-place, chaotic structure of the song will leave the listener with a bizarre aftertaste. ‘Lock Them in Graves’ has one of the wickedest, grooviest riffs I’ve heard Мастер put out, though, so it’s obvious Мастер still has ample talent up their sleeves. The gang shouts are also pretty effective on said song, as well. ‘Burning in Hell (Civil War Disaster)’ and ‘Screams of Pain’ are almost – almost! – throwbacks in terms of sound (and that’s a very good thing!), in addition to being completely bereft of annoying intros. Blazing riffs and greater virtuosity on the drumming, as well as a very thrash-‘n’-roll vibe, add to the overall effect, and a glimpse at what perhaps might have been had not Мастер jumped on the groove-metal bandwagon with Песни Мёртвых and Лабиринт. ‘They Are Just Like Us’ and ‘Go’, sadly, are more of a glimpse of what is to come. Believe it or not, Alik Granovsky’s solos are actually somewhat starting to grow on me; ‘Time X’ is low-key, brooding, dark and minimalistic, much like ‘Амстердам’ on their prior album (and much more tolerable than the other interludes on this album by a long shot!).

One very interesting aspect of the album is that the lyrics have switched over entirely from criticism of the Soviet regime to sarcastic and often blistering criticism of its immediate successor. Pessimism and rage about the state of society underwrites practically every line of the English-language lyrics: horror at the rising wave of violent crime, political instability, oligarchy, gangster capitalism, rampant hedonism, ‘reforms’ at the barrels of guns and tanks, wars, unrest, the continued need for a dedicated resistance by the rebels of society. ‘They Are Just Like Us’ seems to be almost an admission of defeat: the ‘fallen democrats’ of the Yeltsin era are really just more of the ‘same old shit’, no better than the ideological Soviets they replaced, making all the same shady decisions, ignoring the people of Russia and keeping them outside in the cold – basically a big bucket of cold water over the shit-eating grins of Jeffrey Sachs and all of his Russian accomplices.

The greatest tracks on this album are without a doubt ‘Lock Them in Graves’ (minus the intro) and ‘Burning in Hell (Civil War Disaster)’, being as much as anything in good form on an album which is otherwise a bit schizophrenic. This is certainly worth a listen-through all the same; even if it isn’t anywhere near being a classic, it’s still very identifiably Мастер, damn it. Shouldn’t hate on it too much.

15 / 20