A neon-coloured picture of a caveman in modern environment wearing suit and headphones. Guess what we have here? That's right: Nothing like prolonged funeral doom or icy black metal, and as the band comes from Poland, not even barbaric death metal. What this band called Mastemey (don't ask) offer with their sophomore full-length album 'Obraz pozorny' ("sham image") is groovy thrash metal.

Mastemey's metal definitely sounds modern. While it includes bad-ass thrash riffage, heavy-handed chugging and powerful drumming, it also deals rapping and shouty vocals, discordant guitar playing and post-metal and djent stylings. It is quite a concoction of various styles, and certainly not an easy choice for a casual metal music listener.

So, guitars can be good ol' chugging or angry riffing, but the band do change it to discordant or alternative, urban non-distorted stuff like it comes from 1990s, in a snap. The band do have their own thing here, at least I haven't ever heard similar kind of music. The drummer offers loads of varying beats, from fine, attacking double kick drumming to things that sound like they come out of an alternative rock, or even jazz music. And then them vocals... Often it's about shouting, and through some effect, mostly reverb. It's not very angry, but less angry are the rapping parts. The singing is in the band's native tongue, unlike on their earlier releases, where everything was in English. It's kind of easy to say that mathcore meets thrash metal bands that turned into groovy, mid-paced non-thrash during the first half of 1990s. It is not easy to follow, and doesn't offer any lovely melodies or straight routes to nirvana.

The production job is something Metallica have not managed to do for years: It is clean yet fucking heavy, and it is also vivid. This vividness shows that the band do their craft from their hearts. Anyway, the album sounds very, very good indeed. The artwork looks like it belongs to some modern art exhibition, though.

So, the cover artwork forebode "something different". And that's what a listener gets. I find Mastemey's music to be too left-field and not at all easy to follow for more that a few seconds at time; it just doesn't leave much memory marks to my brain. But if you do not fear things such as "modern" or "alternative" together with "metal", then you might find a cool album here.

Rating: 6- (out of 10) ratings explained

Reviewed by Lane
01/15/2020 21:29