Savage Master Dark & Dangerous CD Review
Kentucky doesn’t produce saints. It births sinners, cloaked, chained, and soaked in occult firelight. Savage Master are the back-alley lords of the American underground, and after a three-year stretch in the shadows, they’ve emerged snarling with their fifth slab of leather-clad lunacy: “Dark and Dangerous”.
Once again flying the banner of Shadow Kingdom Records, Savage Master has delivered an album that feels more like a séance held in a backroom strip joint than a typical metal release. And that’s always been their strength, writhing somewhere between seduction and Satan, between the flicker of a candle and the glint of a dagger.
I’ve been chasing this band’s blood trail since “Mask of the Devil” first landed. The sound, early ’80s Metal dragged through the gutter. The aesthetic, Executioners in hoods and a frontwoman, Stacy Savage, dressed like your wildest Hammer Horror nightmare, high heels, high drama, and high-octane vocal fury. She’s never sung, she’s summoned. And she’s always done it with a punk snarl, a Goth queen’s glare, and a dominatrix’s stomp.
But Dark and Dangerous is... different. The title promises Black Magic, but the music offers a bit more midnight romance than I was prepared for. It’s still heavy, but it’s not as bloodthirsty as their previous releases. The rough edges have been smoothed and the sound more polished.
And the vocals, why, for the love of Satan, did they mess with Stacy’s voice? Someone decided to run it through effects. It’s like pouring glitter on a ritual dagger. Her once-feral snarl feels a bit more tamed than needed. Stacey didn’t need dressing up, she was the spell, she still is even through the effects.
And while the band still knows how to riff like they’ve got pentagrams etched into their palms, the lyrical content has wandered away from the occult shadows somewhat. I missed the whispered blasphemies that we’ve been blessed with. But what’s here still bangs: “Black Rider” kicks open the crypt, “Edge of Evil” pulses like a heart buried under floorboards, “Screams from the Cellar” is pure VHS Horror-Metal. There’s also a power ballad. Yeah. “Cold Hearted Death.” It shouldn’t work, but goddamn it, it does. It’s like dancing slow with a corpse that’s still warm. There’s a lust in its longing, a kiss in its final gasp.
In the end, “Dark and Dangerous” still delivers and Savage Master has once again returned with another killer slab of American Heavy Metal that we can’t deny or turn away from. Get it as quickly as possible or be doomed to live in oblivion.
~Black Angel