Blastmasters "Twisted Metal" CD

Blastmasters are a death metal band from Tampa, Florida, a place once known for its thriving death metal scene. Despite the obvious Floridian influences, though, Blastmasters have a fairly unique sound, in spite of not being very original when it comes to the individual performances. What do they sound like? Well, take a healthy chunk of meaty non-stop blasting reminiscent of Vital Remains, throw in a mix of black-ish death metal riffs and the occasional well timed slower groove, a pretty much non-existent bass, wild guitar solos, repetitive Benton inspired vocal patterns... and you have Blastmasters. At times they sound like Deicide, Vital Remains, Monstrosity and other bands, including the Brazilian death metal masters Krisiun, but at the end of the day they're just Blastmasters – a band trying their hardest to live up to their name.
All the songs are pretty good, there's no filler here and the bonus demo tracks are a nice addition for those obsessed with tracking down demos of obscure bands. The production's pretty awful, the drum sound is way too loud and it gives the music a sloppy feeling, which sounds good at times but also sounds too fucking boring. This, along with the ultra thin guitar tone makes me wonder if the band was trying too hard to be old school. If you're the type that ignores faulty production and prefers to focus on the music (or * gasp * ENJOYS bad production.. like me, haha) you won't find anything wrong with it. Hell, the music actually sounds even better when converted to an extremely low mp3 bitrate, but that's just me!
Another small problem (?) with this album is that it gets too damn repetitive at times, some of the songs have like 3 or 4 different riffs, and I could have sworn that some of the riffs are also recycled (but is that a psychological effect brought about by the music? I wouldn't know...) but that's EXACTLY what I expected before listening to this album, and I wasn't really disappointed... hell, I was too busy headbanging and pretending to be in Satan's lair ordering the slaughter of 666 virgins to even think of trying to act disappointed.
Bottom line, if you're looking for a dose of hypercharged apocalyptic death metal that isn't of the 'brutal' variety and like your death metal to be riff-driven, buy this.

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