In the interest of full disclosure, and as a demonstration of the transformative power that comes with taking one’s time and ignoring first impressions, when I first heard this album, I fucking hated it. Ok, maybe saying “fucking hated” is a bit of an extreme shank into the pine straw, but there weren’t a lot of hugs and kisses between myself and With Whips and Chains and even less head banging or toe tapping. There comes a point in time when a grizzled curmudgeon like myself – someone who’s been immersed in metal, including all its awesome glory and all its bullshit and clichés, since the late 70s/early 80s – sees a gimmick or a bunch of people deliberately trying to relive an bygone era and it ends up turning the engine of cynicism over faster than the noisemakers tearing around in circles at Daytona Speedway. Add to that the band’s deliberate attempt at sonically aping the unbalanced sounds and effects of 80s metal and wouldn’t anyone with a reasonably sharp sense of what authentically is and isn’t crook a questioning eyebrow?
As it was with Louisville’s Savage Master. Not that there’s anything inherently wrong with bands uniformly dressed, a frontwoman with an image like an early '90s advertiser in DDI Magazine and a production quality limping along with the same sonic aesthetic as Manilla Road in mind. It’s just that after a long while, after you’ve seen and heard it all, topping the heap off with another retro act bogging themselves down in clichés instead of foraging their own way makes for more of a slog than it sparks any light of excitement.
First whirl – a blah and a lazy shoulder shrug. Yeah, whatever, dudes. Heard it all before when it was called Cirith Ungol, Omen, Brocas Helm and the above-mentioned Manilla Road. Saw it all before with Betsy ‘Bitch’ Weiss, Acid’s Kate De Lombaert and the shitty band David Vincent’s ex-wife fronted. And is anyone really quaking in their loafers about the occult through the lens of headbangers when real life is much more of an unpredictable thorn in the gluteus?
Second whirl – here’s where I started paying a bit closer attention to Stacey Peak’s voice. Well, not so much her voice, which hails from the I-sold-my-Cephalic Carnage-vaporizer-that-my-ex-bought-me-for-our-anniversary husky school of rasp, but her vocal lines and phrasing. The lady knows how to belt out a fucking hook and it was soon after I found my dumb ass humming the chorus riff and vocal pattern from “Burned at the Stake” in the shower that I figured further investigation was warranted.
Third whirl onward – ok, With Whips and Chains may be the meatiest and most starch-ridden of meat ‘n’ potatoes metal, but the more it blasts from the speakers, the more it endears itself to my jaded ears. Let’s not get crazy thinking or proclaiming that this is an original reinvention of the wheel or that Savage Master will be the band that revives the mainstream’s interest in heavy metal the way multi-million selling records have crossed into broader culture. That ain’t gonna happen, but With Whips and Chains is a rock-solid display of how a dynamic vocalist can breathe life into a collection of riffs that are themselves beholden to the rulebook of linear pedals and quarter note-placed power chords, or those centered around the same ascending/descending pattern the world pumped their fist to (before eventually laughing ironically at and/or with) in the context of 80s hard rock and hair metal. Ms. Peak absolutely knocks down all the pins with her substantially infectious phrasing on the choruses of “Dark Light of the Moon,” “Vengeance is Steel” and “Ready to Sin.” Her voice also wavers, could have been a bit lower in the mix, sometimes is too gristly sounding, other times lacks consistent power and warbles imperceptibly-but-perceptibly-enough. However, it’s these little imperfections that add to the soul and guts of her performance, grating off some of the cheese that’s inherent when you’re a group of grown men and women singing about such penetrating topics as “Looking for a Sacrifice,” the title track and when you’re rhyming “witches” with “bitches” in a song about necromancy.
With Whips and Chains will take listeners back to those days when bands wound up recording in regional studios with whatever house engineer/producer was around, available and broke enough to work with an unfamiliar style of music. Being that he (hold off on inundating the comments section and your 'complaining about sexism on Facebook' campaign – thirty-plus years ago, it was almost always a ‘he’ behind the board) had no knowledge or reference point for what metal was outside of Sabbath and Priest, the results were usually clumsy and rough-shod, but possessed enough charm that a sound and style was scaffolded around innocent sounding recordings. Savage Master will likely not ever be spoken of in the same breath as those they are emulating, but are definitely a worthy addition to the pantheon of new, old school metal. The quintet has definitely displayed chops and allegiance to the sounds of steel and with time and seasoning, even the jaded should be able to see the shit load of potential for a cult following to encircle the band like the satanic ritual/black mass they wish they could be living in.
Score: 7/10
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