Metal Allegiance - S/T

(CD Album Review)

***1/2

This album should be a masterpiece... but it's not!!!

Albums of this nature are a funny thing. Whenever you get an album where a whole host of musicians collaborate together to make an ultimate album to end all albums, it almost always never lives up to how the album looks on paper. The most common is when a guitarist makes a solo album and you get a different singer on each track for example, or when both Roadrunner Records and Nuclear Blast a few years back both did albums where artists from their past and present roster collaborated on a collection of tracks.

Generally these albums fall flat simply because the musicians can cancel each other out rather than gel or more commonly because of all the different vocalist’s the album ends up this roller coaster of different styles and moods to suit each vocalist and the album doesn’t really have a common thread running through it so you end up with a clunky, disjointed album with a few stand out moments that normally ends up sitting in your collection gathering dust.

Well thankfully Metal Allegiance has managed to avoid all these traps and we have here a great fun album that is a great buy for anyone who is a fan of any artist involved. There is three constant musicians on the record, including Michael Portnoy (Dream Theater, Transatlantic) who is the albums shining star, he is on fantastic form throughout the album, David Ellefson (Megadeth) and Alex Skolnick (Testament).

The tracks flow nicely and each vocalist fits their track like a glove, like opener 'Gift of Pain' featuring Lamb of God’s Randy Blythe in all fairness sounds just like a track he would produce with his own band, but anything with Randy on will, the same can be said with Phil Anselmo’s 'Dying Song'... it;s just that his voice is so distinctive.

This is no bad thing however both tracks are great and would both work well if dropped into either a Lamb of God or Down live set. Mastodon’s Troy Sanders delivers a great surprise on his track where he gives one of the most melodic performances ever and begs the question why he has faded into the background on the later Mastodon albums, I had to refer to the albums details to find out it was him! The same goes for Trivium’s Matt Heafy on the track 'Destination Nowhere'. I actually thought it was Whitfield Crane (Ugly kid Joe, Ex-Life of Agony) singing.

The albums highlight is the scorching 'You can’t kill the Devil' featuring Chuck Billy (Testament) who sounds amazing. Again it could come straight off a Testament album but I think that is this albums strength it plays like a compilation rather than a random cut and paste job so many albums like this become. Another highlight is the awesome instrumental 'Triangulum'.

What’s this album’s secret? Great songs... simple as that. It’s not a masterpiece and doesn’t have to be... you just get a great collection of songs that’s perfectly timed it doesn’t out stay its welcome. Each musician is on top form. It’s a great addition to your collection when you own at least one album by everyone involved.

And this album has more artists than you can even mention in one review, other musicians on the record include Andreas Kisser (Sepultura), Gary Holt (Exodus / Slayer), Chris Jericho (WWE Superstar / Fozzy, Tim "Ripper" Owens (Judas Priest) and many more... So if you are a fan of any of the artists on this album, then you must own 'Metal Allegiance'.

Review by Joe Denby