Master Massive
The Pendulum

It would seem as though the pendulum has swung back and forth many times for the band called Master Massive, it was conceived back in 1993 and during that time ideas and people has come and gone. The idea to make a rock opera came to them and the focused on darker themes like global warming, and criticism of contemporary society and all of those things. They deal with dark themes and all of those things in this debut that I suppose can be said to have been a long time coming, so what can we say about it then?

Musically it is drifting in many directions, heavy metal, rock, a bit of classical and so on. The production feels a bit dated, especially on the heavy metal parts, they are interchanged with parts that are acoustic and different – those are better produced. Quite a bit of variation over the tracks, maybe it can even be described as a bit incoherent at times. It is a long album, over 70 minutes – over 70 minutes is a long time for an album to play, but considering the rock opera label it isn’t that long. The vocalists are decent overall, but the female vocalist is brilliant.

What to say about the album then? Is it good? Bad? Dull? Interesting? Fantastic? Well, it is a decent album overall, varied and dramatic in parts, at the same time it feels a bit long and a bit ordinary. The heavy metal songs are quite ordinary while the more interlude parts of the album are great and interesting, those are real high quality tracks. The best parts of the album impress me and not so impressed by the rest, many of the tracks feel outdated and a bit uninterested. Seventeen tracks and seventy one minutes of music is a bit on the long side and for me they could have skipped much of the album and kept the best stuff. I really enjoy that best stuff, which is great but it is only too bad that the rest of the album isn’t quite up to that level.

The most different songs are probably the best, like The Monastery which is a real standout track and really good. And then we have Dear Aadham that is another very strong track that also stand out with great vocals and by being memorable in every regard. I think that maybe they should have focused on making more interesting rock songs; I don’t think a rock/metal opera can really shine without special songs and on this album the only special songs are the ones that is more like interludes than the real songs that are to build the album. Fans of rock/metal operas should have a look at it, as should probably fans of heavy metal as there are some really great stuff on here.

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