As not only the resident trad guy, but the one person regularly rating female fronted traditional metal positively, the duty and honor to review savage master fell to me by process of elimination. One could assume that I was looking forward to Savage Master or that I was intimately familiar with their previous work, seeing that the band has carved out a decent underground following within their admittedly already narrow niche. Sadly, Savage Master have rarely done it for me in the past seeming to reference an era of ’80s heavy metal when women being involved was a novelty in itself with no frills to speak of both in instrumental and in vocal performance. Yet, Savage Master are disproportionally proud of that heritage. It always seemed to me that it mattered to Savage Master that they had a female vocalist in Stacey Savage, whom the band puts front and center more and more with every album that they release. Considering the band’s original image centered around a medieval executioner as their mascot, the overall imagery has reached a spot where Stacey wearing a goth snow white cosplay seemed appropriate as a cover image to the band.
I would not rag on about this point so much if Stacey Savage was anything to write home about when it comes to metal vocalists. Stacey seems neither very energetic nor, frankly, charismatic. It would be one thing if Stacey‘s writing made up for this, but her vocal lines are similarly pedestrian, often singing variations of the same melody for every line of a verse and not utilizing a particularly broad range of motifs or creative decisions. Despite this, Stacey Savage sits at the front of every production decision on Dark & Dangerous. Her vocals are loud and upfront and are often generously treated with effects, doubles, and overdubs as to not make us forget that she is in fact the main attraction. The thing is, I would be fine with an average vocalist for an album like this. While the riffs aren’t mind blowing either, the instrumentalists of Savage Master show some decent chops in the rhythm and lead department, possessing a good drive. Dark & Dangerous is also, excluding the closing seven minute ballad, rather well paced and could be an enjoyable, guilty pleasure type listen — if I could focus on the album as a whole. All the production choices that apparently had to be made to make Stacey Savage the center of attention, to make her appear like more of a vocalist than she likely is, are distracting to me, annoying at many points. Particularly the near constant vocal doubling is grating, seemingly born out of need rather than being a stylistic choice. The irony here is, if Savage Master would accept that their vocalist is, when it comes down to it, rather average, I would have a much better time with the record. As it stands, I likely won’t reach for Dark & Dangerous ever again.
