Masterpeace

Ick...this is one of the all-time bad album covers, I think. On the other hand, a pretty decent album from Metal Church at the start of their second try at making things work. I don't want to discuss all the line-up stuff at length, so suffice it to say that early album singer David Wayne was back for this one, and sounding a long way from his best, though passable in terms of late '90s heavy metal competition. Oddly enough though, the band had tried to continue on a similar path to Hanging in the Balance, so Wayne singing like a poor imitation of Mike Howe might not have been totally his fault. That direction means that we get clean guitars on 'Into Dust' and some hard rock ideas on several cuts, although I'd still say this seems more like a traditional metal album than Metal Church's preceding full-length. Thus, it ends up ticking a few boxes, but can't really excite to any great degree.

If I were to close my eyes and whirl my finger around, I'd probably end up poised over the name of a track that emits "solid but unspectacular" vibes. The chugging momentum of 'Sleeps with Thunder' indicates from the off where the album will go, and that theme can be identified on 'Lb. of Cure', 'Falldown', and 'All Your Sorrows', with a thrashier bent to the riffing at times. Despite 'Faster Than Life' and 'Falldown' giving speed a go, it would be hard to claim this as a thrash effort in any sense, aiming more for that pocket that Anthrax or Overkill were also hitting in the '90s, not to mention the more standard heavy metal sounds being peddled by Armored Saint and even Vicious Rumors. 'Lb. of Cure' strikes like a good Black Album or Load song. Far be it for me to say why, but Masterpeace very much gives me American vibes, as if the post-Sunset Strip and grunge death malaise were audible in the background of the heavier cuts. Metal Church lean into that tendency of making the songs a bit longer than they need to be as well, which often dogged the early CD era, and additionally the only brief number is a cover, another fairly straight ahead rocker by Aerosmith. Essentially, we are in that middle of the road sound that marked much contemporary output.

That stigma doesn't make the album worthless, it just shifts the goalposts from what Metal Church had set up during their first decade. Histrionics very much take a back seat, leaving lead instruments rather muted and the whole production focused more on thick groove and momentum; certain solos don't even really move out of a single scale, as the one midway through 'Sand Kings' exhibits, sounding almost rockabilly until the final part; the riffs themselves possess less dynamism than your typical heavy metal patterns and have little of the snap and thrust of thrash. As a result, it falls to the more impassioned messaging of certain songs to give the album its edge. Wayne's yowling verses to 'Into Dust' nudge at the heartstrings with something of an old balladic feel, while the climactic shifts of that song also imbue it with the power of surprise and variety, in contrast to the more static riffing elsewhere. By comparison, a similar attention on vocals makes the bass-clobbering 'Faster Than Life' feel ragged, getting Wayne to sing an extremely varied part that drives verses doing nothing in particular instrumentally: to me, it feels like an attempt to replicate 'Conductor' from the previous album, but with basically no momentum until the bridge riffing hits the spot.

That instance seems like a case where the songwriting suffered, although Metal Church do well in the same stakes when speaking about the longer compositions. 'They Signed in Blood' actually comes rather close to what one might expect of Iron Maiden from the same period, building and releasing through several powerful sections without absolutely unleashing everything at any time, and maintaining an epic vibe as a result, even going for chestbeating "woah"s after the final chorus. 'Kiss for the Dead' sticks a little more to subtlety, all twinkling acoustic guitars and shimmering cymbal strikes for long periods, yet this one escalates in truly superb fashion, which doesn't happen nearly often enough on this album. To boot, Wayne sounds almost as good as his old self and the leads are generally more inspired.

As you can see, Masterpeace needs a bit of time to pick your way through, but it seems unlikely that any Metal Church fan will be either wholly satisfied or wholly displeased with what they hear. The foibles of the time period mostly stand present and correct, while the group refuse to totally abandon their principles. Given the circumstances of the release, that feels like reasonable cause to call Masterpeace a minor triumph. If not for the goddamn CD-ROM artwork, this would have got a 70.