Savage Master – Dark & Dangerous
Louisville, Kentucky; better known for being the home of boxing legend Muhammed Ali and Kentucky Fried Chicken than for being a hotbed of traditional heavy metal music, but from the US state best known for horse racing and bourbon we see the return of classic heavy metal band Savage Master with their fifth album, Dark & Dangerous.
Opening up with a classic atmospheric guitar intro, Three Red Candles, could be straight out of the 80s before we kick into high octane melodic heavy metal. Good riffs, great guitar work and classic sounding heavy metal, that leans much more towards the US power metal tradition of bands like Savatage and Jag Panzer than it does towards the NWOBHM, rounds out the first half of the album with track three, The Edge Of Evil, being a stand out song on Side A. The slower, darker and brooding, Screams From The Cellar, serves as a great midway transition before it’s back into driving, upbeat heavy metal. Never Ending Fire sees some great lead guitar work and Devil Rock is classic heavy metal, but accessible to any newcomer to the genre and at times put me in mind of Ghost with it’s hooky, catchy riffs and melodies. Penultimate track and the heaviest song so far, When The Twilight Meets The Dawn, delivers pummelling, driving metal before the album rounds out with the mellow and atmospheric hard rock song, Cold Hearted Death; another stand out song and a literal rock ballad to death, and with its absolutely classic long, slow-burn 80s style outro solo it could be a dark and brooding take on November Rain, and its quite an apt way to end the album.
Production on the album overall is good. The vocal is slightly too loud in parts and the bass guitar in certain songs is a little wooly and undefined, particularly in The Warriors Call, where it seems to combine with the floor tom to create a real build up in the lo-mids which is incredibly distracting and really spoiled my enjoyment of the album on the first listen; this is a real mis-step, as this track is the first song after the intro and effectively opens the album. The production in the low end improves considerably from this point on but by placing this song where it is with this issue in the production it really distracted from what is essentially a great album. Other than this the track sequencing is good, the album never seems to lose momentum or excitement and musicianship is very good with some really great guitar work throughout.
Overall this is a very good heavy metal album. For fans of those bands that lean towards the more occult side of the genre like Mercyful Fate, Witchfynde and Pagan Altar, or even fans of a band like Ghost who are looking to dip their toe into the more serious and less mainstream side of metal for the first time, I’m certain they’ll find this album to their liking; and for everyone else it’s just a solid, straight-up, traditional heavy metal album.
Rating: 7/10 – Very Good
Label: Shadow Kingdom Records
Released: March 28th 2025
Wayne McAloon | Now Spinning Magazine
